rPath^® today announced that SOASTA, the leading provider of cloud-based testing solutions, has selected rPath’s rBuilder^® and the rPath Lifecycle Management Platform to build and maintain its CloudTest^™ application images for virtualized and bare metal environments. rPath provides SOASTA with end-to-end technology that simplifies the entire range of lifecycle management activities and reduces development, deployment and support costs.

“Prior to rPath, we were spending literally hours preparing each new appliance for shipment, not to mention manually scheduling and delivering updates and patches,” said Tom Lounibos, SOASTA CEO. With rPath, the creation of appliances takes minutes and updates are automatically delivered to the SOASTA appliance, reducing time, cost and complexity.”

rPath’s rBuilder is the first and only development platform that simplifies and automates the creation of application images. rBuilder gives SOASTA the ability to use one set of rPath specifications to generate multiple image types to deploy on a VMware^® hypervisor, Amazon EC2 or a customers’ hardware appliance. During the build process, rBuilder employs over 50 built-in policy checks to enforce quality, conformance and to ensure that only the components required are included in the application image – just enough operating system (JeOS), middleware and other items. The rPath Lifecycle Management Platform technology gives SOASTA complete control over the image, from creation through deployment, configuration, management and update.

CloudTest is available as an on-demand service in the cloud or as a hardware appliance and offers seamless integration of test design, monitoring, and reporting, and provides everything a company needs to test and deliver high quality Web applications and services at an affordable price.

“SOASTA provides a perfect example of the value of virtual appliances – deploying on-premise and via the cloud. With virtual appliances, they are able to offer an affordable and robust solution to meet the demands of today’s market,” said Billy Marshall, rPath CEO. “SOASTA is pioneering a new model for testing via the cloud, and we are excited to work with them to fully realize the benefits of this novel approach.”