Celebrating 10 Years of Ranorex – A Letter from Our CEO

September 2017 marks an important milestone for Ranorex. Ten years ago, Ranorex was founded. Our mission: to create test automation software that truly addresses the needs of software testers. When we began this journey as a team of five, we could hardly foresee that we would grow to become an international company – thanks to the dedication of our employees and our customers’ passion for quality.

Test automation and software quality are matters that are dear to my heart. Back in 2004, I was working on a development team as a programmer, and was responsible for the continuous integration, build and test processes. We wanted to automate our tests, but there was no product on the market that met our needs. The solution was simple: write one myself. I created an application using standard programming languages that both developers and testers could share, and it worked very well. I was certain that this solution could revolutionize the way testers and developers ensure the quality of their software products. Together with my son, Gabor, I decided to create a free library and eagerly continued to develop the solution. I vividly remember the many hours we spent sitting together in our own living room, coding until the early morning hours. It was a project we were both passionate about – and it paid off.

Shortly after we released our first publicly-available free test automation solution in 2006, it was recognized at the biggest yearly .NET conference in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany, the BASTA. The enthusiastic reception to our little project encouraged us to develop a professional version. While I re-developed the core components, Gabor created a website where customers could purchase and download the application, along with a Q&A forum. However, our growing customer base wanted more – they wanted professional support. At this time we had 27 customers, some of which were large, international companies. So, together with EOSS Industries Holding GmbH, we founded Ranorex in September 2007. The initial team consisted of five members: myself, Gabor, Christoph Preschern, Michael Gissing and Alexander Hoisl.

Today, more than 3500 customers in over 60 countries are using Ranorex. While our offices in Graz, Austria, and Clearwater, Florida have grown to more than 100 employees, all five of the original team members are still with Ranorex. Gabor is now the Managing Director and CTO. Christoph, the CSO, is heading the sales team and also serves as the president of our subsidiary in the USA. Alexander is VP of Product Development, and Michael is VP of Research.

Most importantly, we have continued making progress on our core mission: test automation for everyone. Our desktop product, Ranorex Studio, allows developers to create automated tests in C# and VB.NET in the environment familiar to them, while non-coders can create tests using Ranorex’s matchless GUI object recognition and record-and-replay functionality. We’ve added support for leading technologies such as Selenium WebDriver. Our newest product is a cloud-based version of Ranorex for web testing.

As development teams adopt more agile practices, such as Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery, test automation is only becoming more important. We’re excited about what the future holds for Ranorex and committed to ensuring quality software for all.

To see our short anniversary video celebrating 10 years of innovation, click here: Ranorex 10th anniversary video.

Happy Anniversary.

Jenö Herget, Managing Director, CEO and Co-Founder of Ranorex GmbH