Category Archives: Misc

Xceptance Supports Young Explorers with Donation to Witelo e.V.

The little Ozobot speeds around the corner, flashing colorfully, winds its way along a spiral, collides briefly with one of its colleagues and finally finds its way through the maze. It is navigated to its destination by color sensors on its underside, which allow it to follow a defined route. The miniature robot was not programmed by a high-tech engineer, but by Magnus, 10 years old, and the son of our co-founder Simone Drill.

During a programming workshop, he learned to give commands to the Ozobot and to control it with the help of color codes.  This was made possible by witelo e.V. from Jena, who offer working groups and experimentation courses at schools, as well as extracurricular learning formats. These scientific and technical learning venues were founded to promote so-called STEM education, with computer science as one of its components. Students learn the basics about coding, robotics and algorithms in research clubs, on hands-on days and during a wide range of vacation activities. In this context, Magnus also had the opportunity to playfully gain his first programming experience and took his enthusiasm from the workshop home with him.

Source: Ozobot

Word of Witelo’s work quickly spread among the Xceptance staff, and numerous children followed Magnus’ example. Here, the offspring are following in the footsteps of their parents, who are also involved in programming, software testing and development at Xceptance.

“It’s close to our hearts that our children remain curious and have the chance to test their skills, so we would like to contribute to the dedicated work of the association with a donation”, says Simone Drill. “We want to spark young people’s excitement for IT topics and help them to gain perspectives for their career choice.”

With more than 80 network partners from research institutions, companies, associations and initiatives, witelo has established itself excellently in Jena over the past ten years. In addition, there are schools from Jena and the surrounding area, as well as many private individuals who enrich the educational landscape with their commitment. This positive development encourages managing director Dr. Christina Walther in her work: “Students should learn how important an understanding of science and technology is in their everyday lives – but also what great job opportunities the STEM subjects offer.” That’s why she stays in close contact with the parents of her course participants and promotes partnerships with companies like Xceptance. This ensures that the valuable cooperation between schools, science, and business continues to enrich the technical education of young people and that fun and learning don’t exclude each other.

Managing Director Dr. Christina Walther at witelo headquarters

About witelo e.V.

Witelo is the network of science and technology learning sites in Jena. The goal of its work is to get children and young people excited about STEM subjects, i.e. mathematics, computer science, natural sciences and technology. A broad alliance of city, business, and institutions supports witelo – the work of the association is financed by supporters and sponsors.
You can find further information on the numerous offers and activities on the witelo website.

2020 – One Year, One Picture

One Picture Says It All

If we can only use one picture to symbolize 2020, this might just be it. Working from home and video conferences are now the new normal.

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and a Happy and Healthy 2021, because we all need that.

XLT 4.12.1 Release

Xceptance has released version 4.12.1 of its load testing and test automation product Xceptance LoadTest.

Test Framework

  • Fix: Our timer recorder extensions for Chrome and Firefox did sometimes report invalid request entries that could not be processed by the report generator. This could happen for requests that did not complete.
  • Fix: If a test case deliberately caught an exception / assertion error and afterwards ran to completion successfully, it might nevertheless be marked as failed in the load test report.
  • Improvement: Selenium has been updated to the latest version 3.141.59 and HtmlUnitDriver to version 2.33.3.

Load Testing

  • Improvement: The new AWS data center in Stockholm, Sweden (eu-north-1) is fully supported by ec2_admin now.

Make sure to read the full online release notes.

As always, this upgrade is free and don’t forget, XLT itself is free as well. You don’t have an excuse to skip performance testing or rely on lame simple test cases anymore.

Our New Website is Live!

New Xceptance WebsiteWe proudly announce that Xceptance has a new website. Our 10th anniversary made us look back on where we are coming from, what we have been doing and what experiences we gained throughout the past ten years. It was time to have a new web presence reflect all that!

We took advantage of Bootstrap, Less, Jekyll, Git, Font Awesome, and Jenkins to create a website that primarily wants to help our visitors quickly learn about Xceptance, our services and our product. We wanted it to be modern but plain so that we can communicate what we do in the most comprehensive and user-friendly way possible. No boasting, no bragging, and just a little bit about ourselves. To have it all look nice and work smoothly for the mobile users as well, we used Bootstrap.

Since we’re always looking for new people that want to join us, we added a comprehensive jobs page which lists current open positions in both our offices, Cambridge, MA, USA and Jena, Germany.

Go check it out for yourselves! As always, we appreciate any kind of feedback!

We’ve Adopted the Word “Testen”!

WortpatenschaftThere certainly are things out there that money can’t buy, just like the Beatles once sang. However, you might agree with us that money can do good (things), if managed appropriately.

With the company anniversary in mind we at Xceptance sought to combine both the good deeds and a great company gift. That’s how we found out about the idea of a ‘Wortpatenschaft‘ (engl.: “word sponsorship”), a campaign dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the German language (in cooperation with the German nonprofit association Deutsche Sprache e.V., Dortmund).

Continue reading We’ve Adopted the Word “Testen”!

10 Years of Xceptance – The Story

Ten years and 230 projects later it’s time to look back at the beginnings of Xceptance. Let us take you on a quick trip down memory lane!

The Story

In the beginning there was a small group of four colleagues who decided to take a chance and try something new. They pooled their resources, knowledge and QA experience and struck out on their own. The beginnings of Xceptance are thus all about passion and commitment and the belief in making software better.
Continue reading 10 Years of Xceptance – The Story

Xceptance it is!

Acceptance, huh? Be honest, you almost thought we were being serious about this whole name change! But, as convincing as it might have sounded, we’re not going to abandon our fancy company name, ever!

Despite the uncommon spelling we like our quirky label and the way it usually triggers follow-up questions. It is recognizable and fun and, once you got the hang of it, it sticks. We also trust in SEO and the sanity of our customers so that we don’t feel like there’s a reason to worry much about it. Of course there’ll always be the issue with auto-correction, but we think we can handle that. Having said this: Xceptance it is!

Xceptance becomes Acceptance

New Logo AcceptanceJust in time for our 10th anniversary, we are pleased to announce that the company is going to change its name from Xceptance to something more tangible and easier to pronounce: Acceptance.

With that, we are reacting to the release of a search engine list containing the different versions of the search term users entered to find Xceptance online. Terms reached from “Xcaptence” to “Ecceptance” and even “Axceptacne”. To us, this list was some kind of a wake-up call because we no longer want to take the risk of losing clients just because of a fancy company name. That’s why we decided to settle for this easier to google, user-friendly name because, after all, a company name should represent the company it stands for. An additional benefit of the new name: the auto-correction of mail and office software will never put a red mark on the company’s name again.

Within the coming week we’ll update the website and all other company-related content with the new name and logo. For our current clients and affiliates there won’t be any changes.

Applications Open for E-Commerce Professorship

The Department of Industrial Engineering of the Ernst Abbe University of Applied Sciences Jena, Germany, invites applications for an endowed full professorship in E-Commerce / E-Business commencing March 1st 2014.

Xceptance supports the university’s bachelor’s degree program that is to comprise classes such as shop management, social media, or online marketing. We believe that education and innovation are major essentials for both personal and national development and therefore want to contribute to this program by providing both financial resources and professional knowledge.

Detailed information can be obtained from the website of the Ernst Abbe University, Jena in English and German.