Cloud testing has become an inevitable component in the digital transformation process of business enterprises. It delivers a slew of benefits such as on-demand provisioning of test resources, no setting up of costly on-premise test environments, reducing CapEx, and accelerating the time to market, among others.
In the software development ecosystem, testing has often been considered as an adjunct process, which organizations willy-nilly need to put up with to meet their business objectives. Further, the testing process executed through a dedicated in-house infrastructure may be used sporadically. However, given the growing complexities of business applications, organizations may find it difficult to set up and maintain on-premise testing facilities mimicking real-time environment. And even with the requisite infrastructure, organizations may still find it difficult to achieve scalability and operational flexibility to meet ROI.
This is where cloud-based testing can offer benefits like lower investment costs, easy accessibility to test resources, enhanced collaboration, on-demand flexibility, better efficiency, and reduced time to market. However, cloud testing may have challenges in the form of a lack of data security and standards, especially in a public cloud set up. So, stakeholders should explore the advantages of cloud testing services while being aware of the challenges.
Why choose a cloud application testing approach?
In addition to cloud computing, organizations are willing to embrace cloud application testing in view of the below-mentioned advantages.
Testing means new environment: Every new software development project has new testing needs. These necessitate the setting up of new testing environment, which is capital-intensive. Besides, in-house test labs are known to remain idle and underutilized, which make them a costly proposition. However, provisioning similar environments on the cloud when needed and paying for the limited time and resources they are used can save costs.
Testing can allow businesses to run as usual: A cloud application testing approach does not necessarily require the use of sensitive corporate data, which makes it safe. Since such testing has a minimal impact on the running of day-to-day business operations, it can be considered as an effective model of testing.
Addresses the testing complexities: Software applications are becoming complex, distributed, and dynamic to address the digital transformation initiatives of organizations. To test such applications (web or mobile-based) effectively, they need to be tested on a multiplicity of operating systems, devices, networks, browsers, and hardware configurations.
Besides, testing various functionalities of such applications in real-time would require the involvement of a large number of concurrent users spread across geographies and time zones. And no points for guessing that addressing such challenges by setting up in-house testing environments would entail huge capital expenditures. However, cloud-based test automation can be provisioned on-demand to address the above-mentioned challenges, thereby lowering the CapEx significantly. Importantly, the time, effort, and resources saved can be used for core business pursuits.
Organizations big or small must embrace IT modernization as a tenet to stay competitive. A cloud testing strategy allows them the flexibility to provision/decommission the testing environments based on their demand or the absence of the same. Hence, organizations end up accruing significant cost benefits by NOT investing in the following areas:
- Setting up a test infrastructure
- Provisioning of tool licences
- Configuring and maintaining test environments
Cloud has the ability to transform CapEx into OpEx and reduce costs. However, the quantum of cost benefits would depend on factors such as the type of cloud model (public, private, or hybrid), type of tests, and configuration of the test environment. Another lure to adopt cloud testing, besides cost optimization, is the availability of a standardized test environment. The standardization includes the presence of a library and compliance with service level agreements.
Creating on-premise test environments for a single application can be time-consuming and may delay the software application’s time to market. Whereas on-demand provisioning of cloud-based testing environments can be quick as they already exist in the cloud. With cloud testing, organizations do not need to figure out about finding servers, getting licenses for testing tools, and installing them. Instead, they can easily access virtual labs that are scalable and ready-to-use. These labs come with a host of test tools, operating systems, storage, and middleware to create test environments that mimic the real-world. Here, testers can execute testing with minimal or no writing of test scripts thereby shortening the product life cycle.
Other benefits of adopting cloud application testing
In modernizing the IT infrastructure of an organization, cloud-based testing entails a slew of benefits.
- Pay only for things that are used
- Reduces the product development lifecycle and speeds up deployment
- Standardized systems in use
- Latest functionality on offer
- Encourages collaboration, anytime and anywhere
Conclusion
Traditionally, testing has been given short shrift by most organizations in favor of development. However, the imperatives of creating product differentiation in the market by generating superior customer experiences have allowed organizations to provision on-demand cloud-based testing resources with a host of benefits.
Article Source:
No comments:
Post a Comment