What is the role of Cloud Testing in IT modernization?

 

 

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:

https://devdojo.com/ 

The Ideal Strategy for Cloud Applications Testing

The cloud forms an integral part of the digital transformation process implemented by enterprises across verticals. It gives them the necessary leeway to cut infrastructure costs, improve productivity, and enhance the efficiency and delivery of software applications. The best part of using the cloud is its ability to expand capacity, accessibility, and security without burning a hole in the pocket. However, notwithstanding the slew of benefits to be derived from using the cloud platform, enterprises should ensure the quality of cloud-based applications to remain top-notch.

This is where cloud application testing comes into play wherein applications are tested for various aspects including performance before they reach the customers. Moreover, the applications ought to be tested for stability, security, scalability, and speed under various load thresholds. If not, the applications may suffer from inadequacies such as system failure, poor usability, lack of security, lack of throughput, functional issues, and many others. However, prior to going further with devising the strategy for cloud applications testing, let us know what cloud computing and testing are all about.

Why Cloud Computing and Testing?

Cloud computing is about using the resources that are available on the internet such as servers, software suites, and databases, among others. These resources can be accessed from anywhere and anytime and used for data access, storage, and management. Cloud computing allows individuals and enterprises to use internet-based resources without having to install costly infrastructure in-house.

Cloud testing is all about testing the quality of cloud-based applications by using internet-based resources such as software, hardware, and infrastructure. It helps enterprises to maintain/boost their competitiveness without hampering any mission-critical operations. Also, given the ability of enterprises to provision cloud-based resources on-demand, the former can shorten the resource allocation time.

Among the characteristics of a cloud environment is its ability to allow multiple users to access similar resources at the same time. This leads to considerable savings on time and faster delivery of the applications to the market. Although testing in a cloud environment is similar to a non-cloud one, there can be differences when it comes to performance testing. Further, the response time in testing can differ as well. Let us discuss the cloud testing strategy in detail.

The ideal strategy for cloud application testing

Alongside the priority toward accelerating the time to market, the applications developed on the cloud should be tested for their quality as well. The strategy should be formed according to the areas/factors where the test should focus on.

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Get load time information: Since testing can often be elaborate, it may entail consuming a fair amount of resources. So, before testing cloud-based applications, the information should be gathered from the cloud provider on the load shared by other customers. The info would give an insight into the response time for testing. Ideally, one should test an application when the load capacity is high to check the response time. The tests should run multiple times to ascertain the maximum, minimum, and average response time. The response time would give an idea about the extent to which the application needs to be scaled up when the need arises in real-time.

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Automation: When it comes to testing cloud-native applications, automation becomes essential. This is due to the fact that a lot of areas need to be tested simultaneously such as deployments, negative tasks, and functional actions, among others. Also, during cloud-based testing, a lot of variables are needed to be virtualized like end-users, which can be tested quickly and seamlessly with automation alone.

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Conduct stress test: Testers need to know the breaking point up to which the application can remain stable, reliable, and performing. Known as the stress test, it offers critical information about the behavior of applications when put under extreme pressure points. For example, eCommerce applications need to be tested for response times and performance when scores of users try to access them at the same time, like in the Black Friday sales event.

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Testing the virtual memory: The testers should conduct volume tests with the help of memory monitoring tools to look into the capacity and performance of the virtual memory. This is important to know the capacity of the virtual memory for testing the application.

Conclusion

Enterprises leverage the cloud platform to gain advantages such as speed, efficiency, scalability, and cost-effectiveness. However, the same can only be ensured should the application developed on cloud is tested for its performance. So, to build an ideal cloud testing strategy, various factors need to be considered, namely, the availability of resources and bandwidth, project environments, technology stack, skill sets, and business drivers, among others.