UP9 Acquires London-based MockLab, Creator of World’s Most Popular Open Source API Mocking Project WireMock

With 13 million downloads just this year, WireMock to join forces with UP9 and gain Machine Learning and seamless Kubernetes integration capabilities, dramatically improving cloud native developer productivity

PALO ALTO, Calif., December 9, 2021 – UP9, the leader in microservice monitoring and testing for Kubernetes, today announced it has acquired London-based MockLab, the creator of the world’s most popular open source API mocking project WireMock. The acquisition is expected to expand the test automation capabilities of UP9, which uses Machine Learning (ML) technologies to provide a modern alternative to time consuming and antiquated API testing methods. The creator of WireMock, Tom Akehurst, will join UP9 as Chief Technology Officer.

APIs are critical to all organizations that rely on software to run their business. API regressions and security vulnerabilities adversely impact the business if they reach production, consume precious developer time and slow down releases. UP9 enables Kubernetes developers to ensure their APIs perform reliably and securely and are production-ready. By unpacking API protocols like Kafka, REST, gRPC, Redis and RabbitMQ, and continuously monitoring the API payloads, UP9 detects API regressions and prevents security vulnerabilities from drifting into production. UP9 was co-founded by Alon Girmonsky, the founder of the Load Testing platform BlazeMeter, which was acquired by CA technologies in 2016.

“The number of APIs created every day is growing exponentially. Developers need tools to ensure the reliability and security of their APIs, while still staying productive,” said Alon Girmonsky, CEO and co-founder of UP9. “WireMock is a significant player in the API economy, and by combining it with UP9’s existing API monitoring and traffic analysis capabilities, modern cloud-native developers can now develop faster and find problems quicker.”

A mock API simulates the interface to an external system in order to support testing, troubleshooting and prototyping without having to depend on the real thing. API mocks are essential when a newly developed service, that is part of a distributed system, depends on internal or external services to perform reliably. API mocking is increasingly important in cloud native environments, where it enables developers to integrate functional and performance testing into their workflows and increase both productivity and agility.

WireMock was created by Tom Akehurst in 2011 and it was the first to take the pioneering concept of object mocking and allowed it to be applied between services and systems. With the rapid growth of microservice adoption and the booming API economy, the popularity of WireMock grew to 1.6 million monthly downloads, now an essential developer tool used by API developers in thousands of organizations, from small startups to the world’s largest banks.

“Microservices are changing the software development paradigm. Cloud-native developers are experiencing new challenges and need better tools now,” Tom Akehurst, CTO of UP9 and creator of WireMock. “UP9 is setting the standard for what it means to be a developer-first company with a clear focus on productivity and ease. It was a natural move to become part of this work.”

For more information, please visit https://up9.com/.

About UP9
UP9 is a modern microservice monitoring and testing platform for Cloud Native systems that enables microservice developers to ensure their APIs perform reliably and securely and are production-ready. By using deep API traffic analysis infused with Machine Learning, UP9 increases engineering productivity by enabling developers to find problems early and get to the root cause quickly.