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OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional) vs OpenText Silk Test comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

OpenText Professional Perfo...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Performance Testing Tools (4th), Load Testing Tools (3rd)
OpenText Silk Test
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Functional Testing Tools (20th), Regression Testing Tools (8th), Test Automation Tools (17th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Quality Assurance solutions, they serve different purposes. OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional) is designed for Performance Testing Tools and holds a mindshare of 13.6%, up 12.4% compared to last year.
OpenText Silk Test, on the other hand, focuses on Functional Testing Tools, holds 1.1% mindshare, up 1.1% since last year.
Performance Testing Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional)13.6%
Apache JMeter16.1%
Tricentis NeoLoad12.9%
Other57.4%
Performance Testing Tools
Functional Testing Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
OpenText Silk Test1.1%
Tricentis Tosca18.4%
BrowserStack10.0%
Other70.5%
Functional Testing Tools
 

Featured Reviews

HelenSague - PeerSpot reviewer
A sophisticated tool that supports many languages and works with all kinds of applications
I do not have any big challenges with LoadRunner. I only have some issues with load generators. It is a very common issue, and I hope it will be resolved in the latest release. For example, when we start to run our tests, users get the message that the load generator exceeded 80% of the CPU utilization. Even when the number of users is less, we get these messages. I am trying to resolve it, but it is not going. It is annoying. It is not a failure, but I hope that it will be resolved. IBM WebSphere MQ testing can be a bit challenging. It can handle that, but I hope that they will build more and more capabilities. We do a huge amount of testing for messaging. Just like aviation, the railway industry is based on messaging. There is messaging to build trains and messaging to create some bills. There are many train movements. Everything involves messaging. I wish that it will be developed more for IBM WebSphere testing. Monitoring is okay, but for testing, I currently have to create Java users. I have to load a lot of libraries from IBM WebSphere and so on.
SrinivasPakala - PeerSpot reviewer
Stable, with good statistics and detailed reporting available
While we are performance testing the engineering key, we need to come up with load strategies to commence the test. We'll help to monitor the test, and afterward, we'll help to make all the outcomes, and if they are new, we'll do lots and lots of interpretation and analysis across various servers, to look at response times, and impact. For example, whatever the observations we had during the test, we need to implement it. We'll have to help to catch what exactly is the issues were, and we'll help to see how they can be reduced. Everything is very manual. It's up to us to find out exactly what the issues are. The solution needs better monitoring, especially of CPU.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The reporting mechanism is a valuable feature that generates good reports."
"It has good protocol coverage."
"The solution helps my clients save time. It is easier to capture reports and improves product quality. The product helps to identify customer defects during performance tests and reduces workloads. The product has improved my client's user interaction. It has reduced peak load times."
"The solution is quite stable."
"The most valuable features of Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional are scripting and executing the tests."
"Very useful for finding out how the system responds to load, stress, and normal situations, as well as benchmarking with other industry competitors. It also improved our response time, memory delegation, and CPU delegation. In addition, we used LoadRunner to optimize our database and website."
"The stability of Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional is very high. It is the leading tool for stability."
"I would definitely recommend OpenText LoadRunner Professional to other users."
"The feature I like most is the ease of reporting."
"It's easy to automate and accelerate testing."
"The statistics that are available are very good."
"The scalability of the solution is quite good. You can easily expand the product if you need to."
"The major thing it has helped with is to reduce the workload on testing activities."
"A good automation tool that supports SAP functional testing."
"Scripting is the most valuable. We are able to record and then go in and modify the script that it creates. It has a lot of generative scripts."
"The ability to develop scripts in Visual Studio, Visual Studio integration, is the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"You should be able to use LoadRunner as a single platform. You should be able to have browser based access. You should be able to run enterprise tests."
"We are going to continue to use the product in the future, I recommend this product. However, those who are looking for only REST-based on the API, I would recommend some other tool because of the cost. There are others available on the market."
"The solution is very costly. The cost is very high, especially considering a lot of other resources are available now and they are less expensive. For a small organization, it is very difficult to sustain the costs involved in having the solution or the related fees"
"There is room for improvement of the pilot processing, the dump analysis, and forwarding results based on the dump analysis. We have a generator, root controller, different agents, and an analyzer, so all of these are very important when it comes to LoadRunner."
"Lacks specific level monitoring."
"The reporting and GUI have room for improvement."
"The debugging capability should be improved."
"IBM WebSphere MQ testing can be a bit challenging. It can handle that, but I hope that they will build more and more capabilities. We do a huge amount of testing for messaging. Just like aviation, the railway industry is based on messaging. There is messaging to build trains and messaging to create some bills. There are many train movements. Everything involves messaging. I wish that it will be developed more for IBM WebSphere testing. Monitoring is okay, but for testing, I currently have to create Java users. I have to load a lot of libraries from IBM WebSphere and so on."
"Could be more user-friendly on the installation and configuration side."
"We moved to Ranorex because the solution did not easily scale, and we could not find good and short term third-party help. We needed to have a bigger pool of third-party contractors that we could draw on for specific implementations. Silk didn't have that, and we found what we needed for Ranorex here in the Houston area. It would be good if there is more community support. I don't know if Silk runs a user conference once a year and how they set up partners. We need to be able to talk to somebody more than just on the phone. It really comes right down to that. The generated automated script was highly dependent upon screen position and other keys that were not as robust as we wanted. We found the automated script generated by Ranorex and the other key information about a specific data point to be more robust. It handled the transition better when we moved from computer to computer and from one size of the application to the other size. When we restarted Silk, we typically had to recalibrate screen elements within the script. Ranorex also has some of these same issues, but when we restart, it typically is faster, which is important."
"Everything is very manual. It's up to us to find out exactly what the issues are."
"The pricing could be improved."
"The pricing is an issue, the program is very expensive. That is something that can improve."
"They should extend some of the functions that are a bit clunky and improve the integration."
"The support for automation with iOS applications can be better."
"The solution has a lack of compatibility with newer technologies."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing fees are based on the number of users."
"The solution's pricing is expensive."
"I would still consider LoadRunner as an expensive tool and you get a LoadRunner and the Performance Center."
"The price is a bit on the high side, but it is still affordable."
"This is not a cheap product."
"The pricing model and the software licensing model could be better."
"OpenText LoadRunner Enterprise's pricing is reasonable."
"There is a licensing cost that is expensive."
"We paid annually. There is a purchase cost, and then there is an ongoing maintenance fee."
"Our licensing fees are on a yearly basis, and while I think that the price is quite reasonable I am not allowed to share those details."
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Comparison Review

it_user104961 - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 13, 2014
LoadRunner vs NeoLoad
The six phases of an IT project Enthusiasm Disillusionment Panic Search for the guilty Punishment of the innocent (the performance tester) Praise and rewards for the incompetent non-participants This article has been put together as part of an evaluation of the performance test tools NeoLoad and…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise66
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional?
When designing a workload model offers a good range of possibilities for creating goal-oriented scenarios, which helps us understand and meet SLAs.
What needs improvement with Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional?
I have mentioned many advantages about this product, but to discuss disadvantages or areas that could be improved, I would need to consult with my engineers who are working on it. So far I have not...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Silk Test?
The pricing depends on the license used. The pricing is similar to others in the market.
What is your primary use case for Silk Test?
The product is used for manual, functional, and performance testing. I'm using the tool for loading data into ERP systems.
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus LoadRunner Professional, Micro Focus LoadRunner, HPE LoadRunner, LoadRunner
Segue, SilkTest, Micro Focus Silk Test
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, GOME, Australian Red Cross Blood Service, RMIT University, Virgin Media
Krung Thai Computer Services, Quality Kiosk, Mªller, AVG Technologies
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