Cloud Testing is a way of testing software in which real-world web traffic environments simulated using cloud computing to test web applications.
The Cloud Computing has revolutionized the business world, allowing any company to benefit from significant cost savings, outsourcing their infrastructure, platforms and services to cloud providers. This has driven the multiplication of “as a service ” offers, among which the test environments provided as cloud services. We will see below how Cloud Testing allows us to save costs and gain flexibility and agility when conducting our tests in the cloud.
What is Cloud Testing and how does it work?
Companies of all sizes are migrating their solutions in the cloud, which makes Cloud Testing necessary to validate how their applications work under different conditions of use, in addition to their performance, reliability, scalability and security.
According to a study by Market Research Engine, the global market of Cloud Testing is growing by 12% per year and will exceed in 2023 the 9 billion dollars. Because of this, relevant cloud providers such as Advaltis, Compuware, HP, Keynote Systems, Load Impact, Neotys, RadView and SOASTA, have developed Cloud Testing environments.
Cloud Testing is developed along with different phases:
- Development of user scenarios.
- Design of the tests.
- Configuring the test environment in the cloud.
- Conducting the tests, by simulating web traffic from different geographical locations.
- Completion of tests, delivery of results and analytics through a real-time dashboard.
Benefits of Cloud Testing for our company
The Cloud Testing offers us all the benefits of the cloud applied to the tests: unlimited storage, rapid availability of infrastructure, scalability, flexibility. All this allows to reduce the time and the costs of execution of the tests of large applications.
In addition, Cloud Testing offers the ability to simulate real cases of uses by geographically distributed users, with a variety of scenarios, and at scales that cannot be achieved in traditional test environments.
Cloud Testing can help us if at the time of our tests we are affected by any of the following problems:
- We have limited test budget.
- We need to meet strict delivery dates.
- We have to face high costs per test.
- Existence of a large number of test cases.
- Little or no reuse of tests.
- Our development teams are geographically dispersed.
- We need to ensure the continuity of the service during the tests.
Types of Cloud Testing
A Cloud Testing strategy includes different types of tests. Let’s see below the most common:
- Stress tests: are used to ensure that an application can maintain the stability achieved and even exceeded its breaking point.
- Recovery tests: the ability of the application to recover data after a hardware failure is tested.
- Load tests: it is tested if the application complies with the pre-set standards, by generating heavy traffic.
- Performance tests: they are used to discover the limits of the application and its bottlenecks.
- Functional tests: are performed to determine if the application meets specifications or system requirements
- Security tests: ensure that the solution meets data security requirements.
- Compatibility and interoperability tests: they are used to test the application with different operating systems, in addition to the possibility of migration.
- Browser performance tests: to verify compatibility with different web browsers.
- Latency tests: they are used to measure the latency between the request and the response.
Challenges of the Cloud Testing
Like any new technology or model, Cloud Testing also presents a series of challenges, among which are:
- The high initial cost of configuring the test cases to adapt to the cloud environment.
- Security, common challenge to all services in the cloud.
- The accuracy of the test results, in the case of the variable performance of the network of service providers and the Internet.
- The lack of standards on the integration of resources in the public cloud with local resources.
- The importance of service level agreements of our cloud provider.
- The need for specialized personnel, who know the different types of tests and tools.
Cloud Computing is here to stay and the use of Cloud Testing can significantly help companies to test their applications in the cloud quickly, reducing costs, and without having to equip themselves with their own infrastructure.
Are you ready to take advantage of the benefits of Cloud Testing?
