First Orion has overhauled its device testing setup using Sauce Labs' Real Device Cloud, cutting telecom and mobile release cycles by as much as 40%.
The company, which supplies scam protection and branded communications technology to wireless carriers and businesses, said the move also freed up 35% of combined engineering and quality assurance capacity.
First Orion had previously relied on a manually managed fleet of physical devices spread across teams. According to the companies, that approach consumed up to 10% of engineering time in setup work and introduced inconsistencies between test environments.
Under the new arrangement, First Orion moved to a programmable testing layer built on real devices, replacing a largely manual process tied to owned hardware. It said the change improved release-cycle times by 20% across products as a baseline, with bigger gains for telecom products and mobile apps.
The project reflects a broader issue in software testing for telecoms, where companies often need to validate not only interfaces and user flows but also network behaviour, device diversity and longer-running communications sessions. First Orion said it needed tighter control over devices and network conditions than conventional testing portals could provide.
Using the Sauce Labs environment, its teams built custom tooling for screen mirroring during automated tests, real-time log streaming and persistent device connections for longer communications tests. First Orion also said it could test on real devices with live SIM cards on U.S. carriers, which it considered important for its telecom workflows.
Mark Himelfarb, Chief Technology Officer at First Orion, described the company's view of the relationship with the testing supplier.
"Sauce Labs has become more than a testing provider for First Orion. They're a strategic partner and an increasingly important part of how we think about our product strategy," said Mark Himelfarb, Chief Technology Officer at First Orion.
"The Real Device Cloud gives us the flexibility to build the custom workflows demanded by a unique telecommunications environment, creating a foundation that will help us innovate going forward," Himelfarb said.
Operational shift
First Orion said the benefits went beyond faster release schedules. By reducing the burden of maintaining in-house hardware, engineering and quality assurance staff could spend more time on product development, architecture, test design and quality analysis.
It also reported savings of more than 10% on physical-device spending alone. That suggests part of the financial case for cloud-based testing in telecoms lies not only in labour efficiency but also in reducing the direct costs of buying and maintaining devices.
Sauce Labs said it provided access to a global pool of public and private devices across Apple, Google and other hardware makers. For First Orion, the key point appears to have been not just the number of devices available, but the level of API control that allowed it to adapt the system to its own testing requirements.
That requirement shaped its vendor selection. First Orion said it examined alternatives but found limits around data movement, traffic management and the emulation of different conditions.
"We looked at other vendors but found their programmatic capabilities too limited, particularly with moving data in and out, managing traffic, and emulating different conditions," Himelfarb said.
"Sauce Labs stood out because it could give First Orion access to real devices with live SIM cards on U.S. carriers while also providing the level of control the company needed through its API," he said.
AI context
The companies also framed the new testing setup as groundwork for greater AI use in software delivery. First Orion said broader access to telemetry, logs, network signals and test results could let AI models work with more detailed operational data when identifying patterns, diagnosing failures and automating some decisions now handled through manual review.
That matters because AI tools in software development often depend on timely, structured feedback from testing systems. In mobile and telecom environments, where device behaviour and network conditions vary widely, richer test data can be more useful than simple pass-fail results.
Sauce Labs Chief Executive Officer Prince Kohli linked First Orion's deployment to that broader shift in release practices.
"As software delivery accelerates to AI speed, traditional testing approaches and infrastructure become a massive bottleneck, especially in complex environments such as telecom," said Prince Kohli, Chief Executive Officer of Sauce Labs.
"First Orion's results prove that an AI-native code release assurance foundation is key to scaling modern mobile app releases," Kohli said.
For First Orion, the immediate result is a more automated testing process built around remote access to real devices rather than a fragmented internal device fleet. The company said the setup now serves as underlying infrastructure for product development while delivering release-cycle improvements of up to 40% and reclaiming 35% of engineering and quality assurance capacity.