Postman and Microcks partner to deliver enterprise-grade mocking and testing

Kin Lane

March 23, 2023

We are excited to announce that the team behind the multi-protocol open source enterprise testing and mocking solution Microcks has joined the Postman Open Technologies team. When you study the overlap across leading API protocols and patterns across REST, gRPC, GraphQL, and event-driven dimensions, there are a lot of discussions, services, and tooling emerging. But when you look specifically at the leading edge of how APIs are being tested in this reality, there is one clear enterprise-grade leader—Microcks.

Testing your APIs consistently using OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, and Postman Collections across web, gRPC, WebSockets, GraphQL, Kafka, and other popular patterns and protocols is the most important aspect of the API lifecycle today. And the ability to mock your API contracts is essential to how you not only effectively test your APIs, but collaboratively iterate and evolve your APIs. The duo behind Microcks, Laurent Broudoux and Yacine Kheddache, have been living at the intersection of enterprise-grade testing and mocking for a diverse set of APIs for the last seven years. So, at Postman, we wanted to make sure we were tapping into this experience as we invest more in our own road map.

Postman has been heavily focused on becoming a multi-protocol platform with our recent support for WebSockets, gRPC, and GraphQL. Now, in 2023, we are looking to lead the conversations when it comes to how you mock and test consistently across the diverse API landscape that is rapidly expanding. Microcks is already building much of what you will find in our road map, but we feel strongly that the Postman API Platform and ecosystem can supercharge and scale what Microcks offers. This is why we asked Laurent and Yacine to help us build out the future when it comes to multi-protocol testing and mocking—and beyond. And we’re excited to see how their experience and expertise shape our enterprise offering.

As with AsyncAPI and JSON Schema, the first order of business will be to get Microcks put into a formal governance program. Then we’ll get to work on how we’ll be applying the tooling and experience as part of the platform road map. However, the Microcks partnership is much more than just about testing and mocking, and in our minds represents the critical overlap between OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, JSON Schema, Protocol Buffers, and how we test the interface across a diverse range of APIs—as well as the implementation and specific instances of an API as seen by both API producers and consumers. It is this intersection where we are talking about contract testing, design, security, governance, and every other essential aspect of our API operations and the industries they are impacting today.

We are excited about the opportunity to work with Microcks to help strengthen and grow the open source community (just as we have with AsyncAPI and JSON Schema), but also merge their approach with the scale and distribution of the Postman API Platform.

Over the last decade, Postman has become synonymous with APIs and testing, and with the help of the Microcks team we are confident that we can continue to deliver the quality, productivity, and governance API producers are needing, while also giving API consumers a voice along the way.

As with our investment in AsyncAPI and JSON Schema, nothing will change in the Microcks ecosystem beyond us helping put it on a firmer foundation when it comes to governance. Once we’ve done this, you’ll begin to see more of the thinking that has gone into Microcks emerge as part of the Postman platform as we work to bring enterprise-grade testing and mocking for multiple protocol APIs. So, stay tuned. We’re just getting started, and we look forward to having Laurent and Yacine along for the ride!