CLOUD TESTING – THE FUTURE OF SOFTWARE TESTING
Now software industry is laying increased emphasis on QA and Testing requirements for successful product development, since customers expect zero faults and 110% performance from every project. This made engineers to think out of the traditional roots. Traditional approaches to test a software experience high cost to simulate user activity from different geographical locations. Testing firewalls and load balancers involves expenditure on hardware, software and its maintenance . In case of applications where rate of increase in number of users is unpredictable or there is variation in deployment environment depending on client requirements, cloud testing is more effective.
Cloud testing is a software testing using cloud computing, that means using resources found in the cloud.Resources may be any hardware,software and infrastructure necessary to carry out the tests. Easy access to the cloud environment helps organizations approach software testing as an easily scalable, on-demand service.
Cloud-Testing Life Cycle
Clod-testing life cycle includes following activities. Test manager/Project manager/Test leader plays the role of Test admin. Test admin creates the test scenarios and designs tests cases. Based on the scenarios and test cases, automated test script will be generated either by test admin or professional tester. Once cloud-service provider is available to test admin, he creates the user to give an access to testers. Cloud-service provider set-up the infrastructure. Test users/Testers use the credentials to login into the portal and can use all the assets available. Cloud testing process starts here. Testers perform the testing. After completion of the process, cloud testing providers delivers the result.
Types of testings supported:
- Stress : Stress Test is used to determine ability of application to maintain a certain level of effectiveness beyond breaking point. It is essential for any application to work even under excessive stress and maintain stability. assures this by creating peak loads using simulators. But the cost of creating such scenarios is enormous. Instead of investing capital in building on-premises testing environments, cloud testing offers an affordable and scalable alternative.
- Load : Load testing of an application involves creation of heavy user traffic, and measuring its response. There is also a need to tune the performance of any application to meet certain standards. A number of tools are available for this purpose.
- Performance : Testing performance under a particular workload is necessary. By using cloud testing, it is easy to create such environment and vary the nature of traffic on-demand. This effectively reduces cost and time by simulating thousands of geographically targeted users.
- Functional : Functional testing of both internet and non-internet applications can be performed using cloud testing. The process of verification against specifications or system requirements is carried out in the cloud instead of on-site software testing.
- Compatibility : Using cloud environment, instances of different operating systems can be created on demand, making compatibility testing effortless.
- Browser performance : Testing in various versions of browsers can be performed in cloud.
- Latency : Cloud testing is utilized to measure the latency between the action and the corresponding response for any application after deploying it on cloud.
Strong points of cloud-based software testing:
- The testing environment is dynamic and readily available. The on-demand nature of cloud-based testing is a big draw for organizations who need fast turnaround time and don’t mind self service. Most cloud testing applications work using a subscription model, so any user with a browser can register and start testing immediately.
- The services are secure and affordable. Testing can be performed in either public,private or hybrid clouds. The public cloud is the most cost-efficient choice, and an acceptable level of security is maintained. For a mix of cost-effectiveness and top-tier security, many organizations opt for testing in hybrid cloud.
- Elastic scalability. Cloud-based testing allows you to ramp up and ramp down as your needs change or your project goals shift.
- It allows for simple disaster recovery. In the cloud, recovery of any assets is quick and easy, not laborious or complex.
- Cost-effective on the whole. Working via the cloud lowers costs associated with server maintenance and engineer labor.
Though cloud-based testing offers advantages, there also counterpoints to consider before adopting it as a part of our QA approach.
Now, let’s look at a few of the drawbacks:
- Bandwidth issue. In order to maximize the effectiveness of our cloud-based testing tool we will need to have a large amount of bandwidth. Because the cloud’s resources are shared by many other organizations, demand will always fluctuate.
- Loss of autonomy and security. When you become a subscriber to a cloud-based testing application, you hand over your data and information to an outside party. Though in most cases your data will remain safe and confidential, it is a point to be wary of.
Conclusion
Cloud computing has today become one of those “big bangs” in the industry. Most organizations are now leaning to adopting the cloud because of its flexibility, scalability and reduced costs.
Using the cloud for testing is immensely helping organizations to acquire the required tools, software licenses, infrastructures at a very low cost without having to set it up themselves and then worry about its maximum utilization.
Evidently, cloud is here to stay for a long time and cloud testing has a bright future as well. 🙂
Are you working on cloud testing? Please share your experience. Or got a question? feel free to post it in comments.
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