DEVOPSdigest

SmartBear announced the acquisition of Cucumber Ltd., a provider of open source test automation frameworks in the Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) community.

For SmartBear, this latest news reaffirms its continued investment in open source (OS) communities, as the company already supports the industry-leading OS tools, Swagger and SoapUI. Alongside its best-of-breed SaaS offerings, this aligns with its mission of making open source tools available at any part of the software development lifecycle (SDLC).

Cucumber OS tooling is already used by nearly a million developers and testers around the globe to enhance their agile development practices using BDD, and the Cucumber engine is known for its portability across platforms.

“The Cucumber community can count on our continued support and focus on open source tooling,” said Christian Wright, Chief Product Officer and Executive GM at SmartBear. “Cucumber aligns perfectly with our philosophy of supporting OS. We’re excited to get as involved with the Cucumber community as we are with the Swagger and SoapUI communities.”

The addition of Cucumber also strengthens the BDD value-proposition that SmartBear has been building since last year’s acquisition of HipTest, another platform for BDD. The combination of Cucumber’s Jam and HipTest product lines creates the most complete BDD offering available in the market and positions SmartBear as the leader in the growing BDD community.

Not only does this help ensure the continued evolution of Cucumber’s leadership in the BDD thought arena and open test automation framework, it allows SmartBear and Cucumber to work closer together so they can find ways to help users at all stages of their agile/digital transformation. Users and teams can use it at any point of the SDLC – from automating their tests with Gherkin syntax, to already-mature agile teams adopting BDD to enhance their lifecycle/development processes.

“Cucumber and SmartBear is a win-win,” said Aslak Hellesøy, founder of the Cucumber project and co-founder of Cucumber, Ltd. “Our team brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to SmartBear and its quickly expanding HipTest product. This merger expands the SmartBear ability to extend quality throughout the SDLC. Being part of an organization so heavily invested in open source lets us dedicate more time and effort to maintain and evolve Cucumber. And it lets us support the growing number of users who already realize the value of test automation and BDD. Cucumber will remain an open source standalone product, and HipTest will integrate more closely with Cucumber.”

“SmartBear’s Cucumber acquisition augments the company’s existing portfolio both for BDD and open source,” said Melinda Ballou, Research Director, IDC. “Cucumber’s breadth of adoption and the core practitioner and other expertise at the company should expand SmartBear’s solutions and opportunities for quality and DevOps products and strategy, assuming effective integration and execution with the merged companies and on-going commitment to and engagement with Cucumber’s vibrant open source community. Given SmartBear’s strong execution with prior acquisitions and complementary capabilities for the companies, we think this is an excellent choice for both.”