The demand for development and testing tools in the cloud-based applications is exploding. As the world becomes more mobile and online interactions increasingly move to specialized applications, it’s increasingly important that these apps perform and meet consumer demands.

Originally launched to support Selenium tests in the cloud, Sauce Labs has expanded to include manual testing, unit testing, JavaScript testing, along side Web application and mobile app testing.

Sauce Labs’ cloud testing service allows users to execute their test scripts in parallel across today’s most popular browsers. The company now launched a new service called BrowserSwarm, a new management tool that streamline JavaScript testing of web and mobile apps.

Developed in association with Microsoft and appendTo, BrowserSwarm automates testing of JavaScript across browsers and mobile devices. Powered by Sauce Labs, BrowserSwarm cloud-based testing platform allows developers and testers to automatically test mobile and web apps across 150+ browser and OS combination, including iOS, Android & Mac OS X. The tool connects directly to your GitHub code repo and automatically runs the code against common Unit Testing Frameworks like QUnit in the cloud using SauceLabs browser automation, whenever there is an update to the code.

“In early September, Sauce Labs expanded its platform to support JavaScript unit testing,” said John Dunham, CEO and co-founder of Sauce Labs. “Through our partnerships with Microsoft and appendTo, BrowserSwarm will play a vital role in ensuring developers spend less time fixing web and mobile application errors and more time on app innovation.”

The ease of conducting cross-browser application testing in the cloud is a great advancement. BrowserSwarm helps Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) team to test JavaScript frameworks across all available browsers like Chrome, Firefox and IE9+. The IE team is also using BrowserSwarm to test projects like Dojo, Backbone and Modernizr.

“The web continues to evolve at a remarkable pace, with technologies like WebGL and touch-based input becoming part of web standards,” said Justin Garrett, senior product marketing manager for Internet Explorer. “With more users browsing the web on an increasing range of devices and browsers, developers have their hands full with making sure their websites are compatible for everyone. BrowserSwarm is our most recent partnership, along with the free virtual machines and scanning tools on modern.ie, to help developers spend less time testing and more time innovating for the web.”

Another early adapter of automated functional testing is appendTo, the industry-leading front end software development and developer training services. BrowserSwarm is helping appendTo in reducing the risk of relying on different frameworks for testing solution delivery and consulting services.

“BrowserSwarm is an exciting project for appendTo,” said Mike Hostetler, founder and CEO of appendTo. “The ability to directly address testing – an underrated but critical piece of the puzzle to building modern web applications – has far reaching implications. BrowserSwarm makes industry-leading testing available to the widest group of developers possible. It will help organizations reduce the risk of relying on these important frameworks for their company’s standards and critical projects.”

In early September, Sauce Labs extended its cloud testing platform to support JavaScript (JS) Unit Testing. The JS unit testing offers developers the ability to automatically test whether the JavaScript used in their Web and mobile applications renders correctly using its test infrastructure.