Tricentis GmbH and QASymphony Inc., two of the industry’s top providers of tools for performing software testing, today announced plans to merge in a move that will turn up the heat on competitors.

The deal is expected to close within 90 days. The combined company will assume Tricentis’ brand and is set to operate under the leadership of its current chief executive officer, Sandeen Johri. His counterpart at QASymphony, Dave Keil, will become chief operating officer.

The terms of the deal reflect the fact that Tricentis is the much bigger company of the two. Founded in 2007, the provider offers a platform called Tosca that enables developers to create automated workflows for testing the performance and usability of their applications. Tricentis boasts more than 800 enterprise customers including big names such as Starbucks Corp. and Allianz SE.

QASymphony, in turn, offers software for managing the overall flow of software testing initiatives. Its qTest platform is designed to help with tasks such as coordinating the members of a development team and visualizing project results.

Tricentis and QASymphony’s respective offerings are complementary to one another in many respects. With the proper product integrations, the combined company could bring to market an end-to-end offering that covers almost every core aspect of the software testing life cycle. This would up the competitive ante against rivals such as Micro Focus International PLC.

Besides an extensive feature set, the combined company will likely also have a significant amount of capital to work with. Tricentis raised $165 million in funding last January QASymphony announced a $40 million investment a few months later.

It just so happens that both rounds were led by Insight Venture Partners, which suggests the venture capital firm may have had a part in bringing about the merger agreement. Combining two portfolio firms with complementary offerings into a single, larger company would certainly make sense from an investment standpoint.

The deal could facilitate the kind of financial synergies that are often realized when two tech firms with similar focus areas merge and streamline overlapping operations. Moreover, it will allow Insight Venture Partners to avoid potential future competition between two portfolio companies. All this could pay significant dividends if and when Tricentis eventually moves to file for an initial public offering.

Image: Tricentis