CA Technologies builds out its DevOps portfolio with BlazeMeter acquisition

With its acquisition of continuous application performance testing company BlazeMeter, CA Technologies aims to strengthen its position in continuous testing, testing efficiency, and its DevOps portfolio.

BlazeMeter will integrate with CA’s Continuous Delivery solutions to offer CA and BlazeMeter customers solutions that address testing bottlenecks. It will also give customers a more diverse set of test capabilities like functional testing and performance testing, according to Jeff Scheaffer, general manager of Continuous Delivery and DevOps business unit at CA Technologies.

“That’s where BlazeMeter fits,” he said. “It’s kind of a new generation of testing capabilities that allows us to shift left.”

(Related: Reliability the main topic at DevOps Velocity)

Technical buzzwords like DevOps, performance and continuous testing were concepts that not too many companies understood in the past, according to Alon Girmonsky, CEO of BlazeMeter. Now, it’s more relevant and is a way for companies to get market faster, he said.

BlazeMeter was continuing on an easy path, growing independently and aiming to make testing easier and more streamlined, according to Girmonsky. Realizing that the market is doing well now for continuous testing and performance solutions, it made sense for an acquisition with CA Technologies, especially since both companies share similar goals, he said.

According to a CrunchBase report, CA Technologies acquired BlazeMeter for an undisclosed amount. A GeekWire report indicated that the company sold for US$100 million.

“CA Technologies can bring to BlazeMeter what BlazeMeter lacks, and that is the sales, the marketing, the reach and scale,” said Girmonsky. “BlazeMeter can bring the technology that CA lacks, which is kind of this continuous testing, DevOps-friendly testing infrastructure. [We can] go to market faster and bigger than BlazeMeter could have on its own.”

Girmonsky also said that he sees CA and BlazeMeter working together to solve a wider set of challenges that enterprise developers face, including common challenges that developers face. One challenge that all developers experience is that every software company seems to be moving to agile, causing them to rebuild their tool stack, he said. As a result, there are new practices, new processes, and lots of integrations that need to be done, he said.

Girmonsky said that BlazeMeter’s focus will remain the same with this newly formed relationship. The company’s passion is continuous testing, and Girmonsky said they will continue to better and add to its services around continuous testing, with better integrations, more applications, up until the point where test operation is completely streamlined, he said.

BlazeMeter currently maintains offices in Tel Aviv and Palo Alto. Scheaffer said one of the good things about bringing BlazeMeter on board is that CA Technologies development sites in Santa Clara. CA Technologies also has a location in the suburbs of Tel Aviv (in Herzliya), said Scheaffer.

Building out the DevOps portfolio This isn’t the first time CA Technologies has picked up a company in order to round out its DevOps portfolio. From 2011 up until its acquisition of BlazeMeter, CA Technologies has used acquisitions to build out its tool chain.

In 2011, when CA acquired privately held service simulation solution company Interactive TKO (ITKO), it combined the company’s tools with CA’s service assurance, service automation, service management and turnkey offerings, setting it up to compete with the market’s need for better IT-management solutions.

CA Technologies later wanted to build out its support for APIs, making sure its technologies would help customers better secure and manage their APIs quickly and in the cloud. This is when the company acquired Layer 7, a provider of API security and management tools. The acquisition was completed the summer of 2013.

Also, CA Technologies acquired Rally Software in May 2015, which allowed CA to expand its agile development software services. The acquisition also added to its existing strengths in DevOps and management of the cloud.

The reason for all these acquisitions, including BlazeMeter, is because the market has seen a major shift away from close-source, proprietary vendors, and has moved toward offerings that are built on open source as well as offerings from new age technology companies, said Scheaffer.

He said that CA Technologies would look to the collective wisdom of BlazeMeter’s open-source community to adapt the offerings of new technologies entering the market.

BlazeMeter has been growing its open-source developer community as it adds new functionalities to its performance testing tools, and Girmonsky said its continuous application performance testing solution is fully compatible with Apache JMeter and other open-source tools like Gatling and Selenium.

“As you look to scale these [minimum viable products] as part of a center of practice, there is incremental requirements that are necessary, so it’s how you take that open-source community and add value on top, both at the product level and by offering it as a service,” said Scheaffer. “This eliminates all of the complexity and the cost of adoption. Customers are asking for that.”

CA Technologies Co-Founder Charles Wang Dies At 74

Charles Wang, a Chinese immigrant who co-founded CA Technologies and built it into one of the largest software companies in the world, has passed away from lung cancer at the age of 74.

Wang spoke no English when he arrived from Shanghai as an eight-year-old boy and settled in Queens with his family. His father, a Supreme Court justice in China, was fleeing a communist takeover, and encouraged his three sons to pursue math and science careers in America, according to a CRN Top 25 profile in 1997.

Wang graduated with a bachelor of science degree in mathematics and physics from Queens College where he met classmate Russell Artzt. The duo teamed up up to found CA Technologies in 1976.

With a fiery, competitive drive and New York street smarts, Wang built CA Technologies into a mainframe software powerhouse with an ever expanding software portfolio that was fueled by some 200 acquisitions over the years. At its peak, CA Technologies - which has been renamed CA - was the second-largest software company in the world behind Microsoft.

“I look at the heart,” Wang once told CRN in an interview, speaking about his knack for bringing top talent to CA Technologies. “I want guys who have it. Everything else you can teach.”

Wang was renowned as a deal maker extraordinaire, pushing to get deals done at a frenetic pace. Among the companies CA acquired was Cheyenne Software for $1.2 billion in 1996 -- then considered the largest software acquisition ever. CA followed that up three years later with the acquisition of Platinum Technology for $3.5 billion – again the largest software acquisition ever at the time.

In building CA into a $6 billion powerhouse with 40,000 employees at its peak, Wang became a business icon on Long Island, giving millions of dollar to charities including $25 million to the State University of New York at Stony Brook to establish an Asian Cultural Center.

In 2000, Wang purchased the New York Islanders and used the same drive that he brought to CA to keep the Islanders on Long Island.

Bob Venero, CEO of Holbrook, N.Y.-based solution provider Future Tech, No.115 on the CRN SP 500, said Wang was the epitome of the American dream.

"Charles came to this country with nothing and built one of the most powerful software companies in the world for its time," said Venero. "He was a master deal maker. He built a mega-software empire from the ground up. He was one of those self-made billionaires who never forgot where he came from and the people that helped him along the way."

Venero, a Long Island native and 22-year industry veteran, recalled teaming up with Wang on a partnership to develop Future Suite- a next generation of luxury boxes for sports arenas at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

When the NHL lock-out of 2004 resulted in the cancellation of the season and put the Future Suite partnership under pressure, Venero says Wang agreed to cancel the deal.

"That contract was putting a big financial burden on us, hurting our growth as a company and I told Charles about it," he said. "I'll never forget this- Charles said to me- 'Don't worry about it Bob. We'll cancel the contract. You are off the hook. That is what friends do.'" That deal that did not come to fruition was the start of an even deeper friendship between the two.

Venero recalls Wang asking for a ride in a new Hummer that Venero had recently purchased. "We went for a ride and went off road and he loved it," said Venero. "He was one of the most down-to-earth billionaires that I have had the pleasure of working with."

One of the business lessons that Venero learned from Wang is to always focus on the after sale. "Charles understood that the company you sold product to needed you to be there not just for the initial sale but for the life of the product," said Venero. "He understood the stickiness of the solutions relationship."

Venero said that the relationships like the one he had with Wang was what made it such a joy to be part of the IT industry. "These are the kind of memories that make such a big impact on you," he said. "I can't help but smile when I think what it was like to work with an individual like Charles while he was on this earth."

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