Borland, a Micro Focus company, announced significant updates to the Borland Silk Portfolio - a comprehensive set of test automation tools for cloud, web and mobile platforms so organizations can now test any application across any end user configuration faster and easier than ever.

The new release also introduces Silk Central Connect, a cross-browser testing tool that helps customers solve the challenge of supporting an almost endless variety of web and mobile browsers. It provides a virtual execution and configuration environment that can reduce testing time and effort by up to 80%.

"Customers need easy to use tools that do everything from reducing cross browser testing time, to automating manual test processes and ensuring peak performance across all application types," said Archie Roboostoff, Borland Solutions Portfolio Director at Micro Focus. "The Silk Portfolio of testing solutions brings all of that together, streamlining testing across desktop, web and mobile."

Working with existing development and testing frameworks, the Silk product family delivers more capabilities to make it easier for customers to transition from traditional application environments into more fast paced and agile web and mobile environments. It reduces time and cost through an innovative virtualized and cloud based infrastructure that brings professional test environments within reach of smaller development teams, and removes the requirement to provision additional costly hardware to complete testing cycles. The end result is a dramatically lowered effort and cost of adopting automation for both agile and traditional development teams.

The Silk family of products are seamlessly integrated to deliver additional benefits to users. The new release brings Silk Performer and Silk Test even closer together, enabling customers to leverage their existing script investment to jump start their performance testing initiatives. Customers that already have working Silk Test scripts will find it much easier to get up and running with Silk Performer. Silk Central Connect is embedded in the new update of Silk Central to allow for a seamless upgrade without the need for extra software. Silk Test has also been integrated with Silk Central Connect to harness the power of the cloud to do fast and easy cross browser testing.

Specific Silk Portfolio updates include:

Silk Central Connect - New cloud based cross browser testing tool for web applications on a variety of browsers, without the need to buy expensive hardware. Borland provides Amazon images with various versions of Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer, which can be integrated into Silk Central Connect to quickly test across all browser types with the click of a button. To give a quick and easy view across the multitude of test results, Silk Central Connect delivers a side-by-side result comparison that ensures applications look and feel as they should across popular browser combinations. It allows customers to embrace HTML5, web and mobile developments and quickly test across a variety of platforms.

Silk Central - Test management for agile and traditional development projects that eliminates the need to work from out of date spread sheets and documents. Silk Central gives a unified control and view of all testing activities across the organization, regardless of the tools or technology used. Updates include improved usability, an ability to import requirements from Excel to improve requirements validation and improved decision support via reporting that can be shared across groups and users.

Silk Test - Powerful test automation that delivers cross browser and cross platform testing designed to be used by a wide variety of users without any coding. For those that prefer to write code and work in the IDE, Silk Test integrates with different IDEs including Microsoft Visual Studio and Eclipse. Updates include improved precision and speed and mobile browser support, which enables customers to use existing desktop browser scripts and run them on Android mobile devices without the need to create additional scripts. Record and replay has been made easy against any application, including mobile browser recording and configuration testing in the cloud, which eases the burden of setting up different configurations.

Silk Performer & Silk Performer Cloudburst - Easy and cost effective performance and load testing for web 2.0, enterprise and mobile applications. Execute peak load tests in the cloud with Silk Performer CloudBurst without investing in hardware and infrastructure costs. Updates include an ability to use Silk Performer CloudBurst on internal web applications and enhanced reporting that enables customers to capture all raw measure data of a load test for full results analysis flexibility. This release also extends support for asynchronous web communication to ensure even the most advanced Web applications perform under heavy load.

Silk Mobile - Functional testing of mobile devices across all platforms. Plug in and go, no jail breaking, just install on your PC and plug in any mobile device for automated testing. All the benefits of test automation are now delivered to native mobile applications with Silk Mobile.

Silk WebMeter - Advanced website performance tool that tests websites globally. Free to use, lightweight and easy to use, it sends alerts when web applications are slow and non-responsive and leverages Borland's global network of servers and agents to ensure applications run 24x7.

"Our aim is to deliver a portfolio of quality products that truly offer a 'better together' end user experience," added Roboostoff. "Our integrated software quality suite ensures everyone is on the same page during the software delivery and quality process. The end result is improved collaboration, better products, faster release cycles, lowered development costs and dramatically increased end user satisfaction."