Spearline acquiring testRTC – this is rocket surgery

Spearline acquired testRTC and now supports WebRTC testing and monitoring. This will change what I do, but in good ways.

This week the announcement became public. The company I co-founded with a few friends, testRTC, got acquired by Spearline. It is the end of a chapter and an opening of the next one.

For starters - I am still going to do what I did so far - have fun and help companies with their WebRTC and CPaaS challenges.

I tried to keep testRTC at an arm’s length from BlogGeek.me and what I do here just because… well… not sure why. Probably to stay as impartial as I can with the things that I do. That said, it is probably a good time to explain where we are with testRTC and our support for WebRTC applications.

Where are we with testRTC?

We’ve started testRTC with the intent of providing a self service, cloud hosted testing solution for those developing with WebRTC. Along the way, we’ve expanded our product lines to include 3 separate domains with 5 different products:

1. Testing
   • testingRTC - our marquee testing product that can be used today for regression, stress and performance testing
2. Monitoring
   • watchRTC - a passive monitoring service that integrates with the WebRTC client application collecting data from real users, gauging quality of service that they get, both in aggregate and on the individual user level
   • upRTC - an active monitoring service, validating your application’s uptime and quality, able to understand your SLA
3. Support
   • qualityRTC - the WFH (Work From Home) support tool focusing on connectivity and quality issues by offering end users a self service route and reducing average handling time for support teams
   • probeRTC - continuous network monitoring service for office locations to deal with network fluctuations from specific locations to your WebRTC cloud service

Simply put, we are the only vendor today offering support for the full lifecycle of your WebRTC application - from development to deployment and long term maintenance of the service. We do that at scale, in the cloud, with a big smile 😃

And then we met Spearline, and found a common ground.

Who and what is Spearline?

Spearline offers testing and monitoring for your telephony services.

They have a large global deployment with real phone numbers across 70+ countries and carriers worldwide - landline and mobile. If you need your phone numbers tested and validated for their quality and performance (and you do), then you go to Spearline. Why? Because without actually testing a number, your only insight that a number isn’t working (say your sales line) is to get a customer to complain about it - which is way too late.

This all made perfect sense for us at testRTC. When we were approached, it was easy to figure out that this falls into this category:

SYNERGY

• Same domain
• Similar customer base
• Different technologies

We’re completing Spearline in a few ways (WebRTC being an important part of it), and Spearline completing testRTC in other ways (telephony, scale and enterprise sales to give a few of the things we were after).

Which leads me to rocket surgery.

Rocket surgery

I had a technical call the other day. Related to BlogGeek.me. Someone at the call said “rocket surgery” at some point. It took me a few seconds to deconstruct that and understand it - he probably meant to say rocket science or brain surgery - just to indicate that they’re doing things that are hard, but not that hard (he said “this isn’t rocket surgery”).

Then it dawned on me. Rocket surgery is the best term I have for what we’re currently doing.

We’re marrying the best of both worlds here at testRTC & Spearline, so we can now offer our customers rocket surgery solutions. Things that no other vendor out there can do for you.

And that excites me - the things we can achieve and the plans we’re making for the future as part of this acquisition.

What changes for BlogGeek.me?

Nothing and everything.

(can you spot the 10 differences between the images above?)

I am continuing my work at testRTC as before. Not as CEO (never liked that role), but as head of products for testRTC (which is kinda like a small CEO). testRTC is my baby. I want to see it grow and flourish.

But then again, I like the diversity and the thrill and fun of doing everything. And Spearline were kind enough to allow me to continue with my extra curricular activities. These include the courses, the weekly, insights, consulting and Kranky Geek.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my future. And what else I want to do. I don’t have the answers to it yet. For the foreseeable future though, this is going to be helping you with your WebRTC and CPaaS needs.

Onward and upward

2021 has been a rollercoaster. I enjoyed the ride.

Here’s for a 2022 that is thrilling, exhilarating and fun.