OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional) Reviews

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OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional)

May 2025

Free Report: OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional) Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about OpenText Professional Performance Engineering (LoadRunner Professional). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How are customer service and technical support?

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

What other advice do I have?

What is most valuable?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

How are customer service and technical support?

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

How was the initial setup?

Valuable Features

Improvements to My Organization

Use of Solution

Deployment Issues

Stability Issues

Customer Service and Technical Support

My company needed a better way to introduce new applications and update existing software releases efficiently. Our past system hindered us from delivering new products and services quickly. To maintain rapid business growth, we realized that seeing the entire IT process during such projects was essential. We required appropriate testing tools to assess processes, manage change, determine application performance, resolve problems and improve defect visibility.

We wanted to move away from simply dealing with defect management and introduce a new testing regime with a sound methodology. We needed well designed testing processes, the correct software tools to support requests and a quality platform for test management and release. My company researched the market and approached several software specialists including HP. To evaluate proposed solutions, we presented each vendor with several testing scenarios. We liked the adaptability, ease-of-use and reporting capabilities of the HP Software solution.

The HP solution comprises a comprehensive package of software tools to help us reduce risk, lower cost and increase real-time visibility – key business drivers within the financial services industry. HP QuickTest Professional offers us automated functional and regression testing to lower the time, risk and cost associated with application testing, whilst HP Project and Portfolio Management Center provides real-time visibility and control over IT projects that are important to our business strategy.

To decrease problem resolution times, we deployed HP Service Manager 7, a comprehensive and fully integrated IT Service Desk suite containing seven foundation components, a Help Desk and a Change Management module. Moreover, HP Quality Center, a web-based application, accelerated the application lifecycle by presenting consistent, repeatable processes for planning tests, analyzing results and managing defects.

In addition, before we introduce a new application or upgrade a release, we utilize HP LoadRunner to detect potential performance problems within the production environment. By measuring end-to-end performance along with identifying application and system bottlenecks, we have reduced costs by 31 per cent and minimized application testing and deployment times.

With the introduction of the HP Software solution, the analysts and developers in our IT department have witnessed a transformation of the company’s testing methodology. We now have a comprehensive testing environment which previously lacked scope. Quality management, quality assurance and defect management have improved significantly, and application performance issues are readily resolved.

We estimate that IT efficiency has improved 24 percent. A recent return on investment study looking into the deployment of HP Quality Center indicates that over the last three years we have saved approximately $6.75 million. Moreover, annual quality management process efficiency estimates stand at $1.26 million and the annual financial benefit of avoiding application support costs is at least $820,000. With this dynamic HP solution, the number of defects resolved over a three day period increased to 44 per cent and problem resolution times have fallen by 60 per cent.

Valuable Features

Improvements to My Organization

Room for Improvement

Use of Solution

Deployment Issues

Stability Issues

Scalability Issues

Customer Service and Technical Support

Initial Setup

Implementation Team

Other Advice

The main reason that we decided to implement LoadRunner was because of our serious lack of insight into exactly where flaws were stemming from when a problem arose or how we could fix those problems earlier and more efficiently in the future. When a problem was found, solutions could only be given after the fact, making the losses bigger and causing more damage than necessary. We needed to increase our awareness of the challenges and issues that could come up before they arose, or at least catch the problems faster than we currently were, in order to tackle them properly.

As the company grew and our infrastructure increased, the task of testing and debugging our entire system transformed into a colossal and costly problem. Our service, which includes providing healthcare and insurance services to a wide range of patients and clients, was becoming inefficient as well, making the need for in-house testing of our various software flaws urgent.

LoadRunner seemed to be an obvious solution since it recreates real life scenarios on a virtual plane in order to test the performance rate, speed, efficacy and functionality of the system during those actual situations. In this way, we could easily pinpoint problem areas, bugs and other flaws to the system prior to the real time launch, avoiding tremendous issues from ever arising.

We tried out three different virtual assessment products concurrently. Each of these products was tested in a wide range of areas that were either commonly known to be problem areas or were considered to be of great importance to remain problem-free. Some included:

• Secure systems
• Overall system substructure
• Performance speed and accuracy

The system that came out as superior during the testing was HP LoadRunner, and we purchased the package immediately upon reviewing the results of the trials. This choice was made primarily for the software’s extensive capabilities, though HP’s greater overall presence within the technology field also contributed to the ultimate decision.

Installing LoadRunner was an uncomplicated procedure, needing no third party or outsourced services or tools. The successful implementation of this software led to the acquisition of some 250 licenses from the onset and an additional 1500 in subsequent months.

We proposed a three-year window to view the results and overall ROI of the product. To our surprise, LoadRunner provided positive effects even faster than we would have expected in a real and tangible example as described below:

One of the portals that our company used for selling various insurance packages and products developed major issues. As a result, brokers were losing sales because of the inaccessibility of their services. With the use of HP LoadRunner, the entire issue was simulated, examined and solved within a week of the initial symptoms. The software actually paid for itself within that first month simply due to the efficient manner in which the problem was able to be recreated, analyzed and dealt with.

Other members of the staff also found the product to be more effective and easier to work with due to the alacrity and smooth, automatic functions that were performed. As a result of these faster protocols, team members were able to meet strict deadlines that were otherwise unrealistic prior to theLoadRunner implementation.

The load testing capabilities and efficient performance were rated as the most integral aspects of this software, though the adeptness at getting to the core of the issue was a very close second.

Other features that people found generally helpful were the reports and the quick visibility focusing in on a problem area. Using HP LoadRunner in combination with the SiteScope software from HP has made all of these inevitable mishaps easier to deal with in a timely manner.

Our use of LoadRunner has become a standardized process, a part of our regular routine. The software is repeatedly used to discover the source of a problem when code freezes pop up. What is more, the usage of these tools is not limited to IT techs; everyone from the developers to quality assurance and even management is actively using this software to hone in on the problem areas and solve the issues quickly.

HP LoadRunner has been a gateway into the implementation of other invaluable HP tools such as Application Lifecycle Management products. In general, there has been a vast improvement to the performance and output of the company since the use of this product has been initiated, and everyone has seen positive results in the form of fewer problems, greater visibility and faster response times to issues that will come through. Having a central database for problem solving tools and resources has also contributed to the efficacy of our staff individually and as a team.

On 12^th June at HP Discover, I attended one of lecture sessions led by Shane Evans and Silvia Siquiera. During the presentation, they introduced the new features of LoadRunner 11.52. They started the presentation by introducing the new features that came in LoadRunner 11.50 (last year) and then highlighted the features that had been added since then.

Key new features:

• Improved application performance (particularly VuGen startup and Analysis).
• Integration with HP Live network. (HP Live network connects partners customers etc.)
• Replay summary report displays detailed statistics.
• Improved run time settings interface.
• Can now configure round robin ramp up across load generators.
• Integration with Visual studio and eclipse for agile CI/CD.
• Support for Junit, nUnit and Selenium in LR scenarios.
• LR scenarios as part of unit testing.
• Can add performance tests as build steps in Jenkins.
• VTS 2 is a big feature.
• Mobile traffic recording apps for Android.*
• New, improved proxy recording feature.
• Shunra network virtualisation enhancements, a single load generator can now simulate different network types simultaneously e.g. some users on 3G, others on DSL etc. this removes the requirement to have a load generator for each “network type”.
• Additional support for Linux load generators (different Linux versions).
  (This alone could be a reason to migrate to 11.52, Linux load generators can significantly reduce license costs for your test equipment).

*Whilst the new mobile recording engine is useful, I can’t help but feel that HP has scored an “own goal” in marketing terms. A number of their competitors are making lots of noise about their ability to test mobile applications and this announcement implies that HP are only just getting their act together on mobile testing. HP has been able to test mobile (and many other) applications via a proxy recorder for as long as I can remember and I’ve been using LoadRunner since 1999. This is new proxy recording engine undoubtedly makes scripting easier but it isn’t their first foray into mobile testing and their competitors are disingenuous if they try to make that claim.

Future trends
64-bit VuGen
One customer asked about whether HP had any plans for 64-bit VuGen or Load Generators. Shane Evans said that they didn’t perceive particular demand for this especially since load generators could each spawn multiple 2GB processes for load generation but that they would consider this if there was sufficient customer demand.

This question prompted a few others and one customer asked whether dcripting languages other than C were being considered. Shane said that JavaScript was being considered as a possible scripting language. This could pave the way towards using NoJS as a test engine.

Network simulation
The discussion then moved to network simulation and Shane asked the room whether people were using network simulation tools like Shunra or WANEM as part of their tests. Only 2 people in an audience of approximately 90 were using network simulation tools.

Diagnostics tools
Only one customer was using HP diagnostics and two or three others were using Dynatrace or other diagnostics/profiling tools like Wily Introscope. I would be very surprised if network simulation and application diagnostics weren’t significant growth areas for specialist testers in the coming years. These products add significant value to testing engagements and are becoming more important as users become more mobile and applications are increasingly hosted on virtual platforms where performance optimisation is more important.

VTS2 – Virtual Table Server
Shane then did a small demonstration of VTS2. I was a big advocate of the original VTS (virtual table server) and since it’s demise I’ve looked at various ways of managing test data in scripts (such as using MySQL) . VTS was always an unsupported add-on (originally written by Mercury engineers) to allow parameters to be passed from script to script. This worked well but had a number of limitations. As well as being “technically” unsupported, the database had to be loaded with parameters from a CSV file before tests and you had to remember to save the “database” to a file each time that you shut it down.

VTS2 doesn’t have these limitations. It is based on the MongoNoSQL database and can handle up to 2000 txns/sec easily (I can’t wait to try this properly). Media for VTS2 comes with LoadRunner 11.52 or is downloadable from HP SSO.

LoadRunner 12.0 ?
Silvia mentioned the fact that there were so many new features, some people within HP felt that this could merit a new major version number rather than simply adding 0.02 to the last release. This reminded me of Stuart Moncrieff’s summary of 11.50 last year. Having seen the new features, I think that she’s probably right, LoadRunner 12.0 and Performance Center 12.0 are probably already here :)