Step Ahead With Cloud Testing
The cloud computing technology has successfully opened new vistas of opportunities for testing. In fact, it offers a compelling combination of lower costs, pay-peruse and eliminates the upfront capital expenditures.
Software testing is one of the most significant activities happening in the software development. The procedure determines the correctness, completeness, and quality of the developed product. Over the time, software testing has become quite a challenging activity for enterprises due to the sudden increase in technological complexities. As a result, it becomes harder to build and maintain in-house testing facilities that mimic real-time environments.
Introduction: Cloud Computing
Not so long ago, the industry witnessed a new buzzword and technology called “Virtualization”. The term was all about sharing computing resources across multiple operating systems in order to reduce the capital costs, increase scalability and enable easy administration of the IT infrastructure. Soon virtualization evolved in the form of cloud computing, a model that views everything. Take a real life example, consider having a meal at home versus having a meal at the restaurant. The objective is purely the consumption of a meal, but it is the approach or model that makes the difference. At home, you need to make sure of the ingredients, preparation for the dish, cooking the dish, its presentation, etc. While at the restaurant you only go to the restaurant, order the dish of your choice and pay for the services. The ideologies and principles of cloud computing are pretty similar to the above-mentioned example.
Cloud testing- Need for it
The term generally refers to testing of resources such as hardware, software especially those which are available on demand. In fact, cloud testing can be viewed “as a service” where it is essential to make sure that the service (product) not only meets its functional requirements but also nonfunctional requirements.
With the benefits mentioned below, the need for cloud testing turns out to be easily visible.
Dynamic availability- The normal testing approach is to invest in the hardware/software infrastructure needed for the testing. And most of the software developers will agree with the fact that the environment supplied to testing teams very rarely matches a customer environment. Due to which it becomes pretty challenging for them to keep up. Cloud is the need of the hour to find defects early in the cycle.
Low Cost- Another angle is that when companies invest in the infrastructure where most of the servers will remain unutilized for a long time. As a result, they may have to incur additional expenses on license renewal. Migrating to cloud helps a lot, users can commission appliances whenever they want, saving huge costs for an organization.
Easily Customizable- With the proper usage of cloud, its easy task for organizations to emulate an end-user centric environment simply by customizing it as per saving cost and time. There are numerous testing scenarios and with combinations such as different OSes, browsers, configurations, test teams can now perform the task effectively and efficiently.
Scalability- The most attractive features of the cloud through which the computing resources can be increased or decreased wherever necessary. It is extremely useful in situations where the business requirements keep altering frequently.
Let’s take a deep dive
Testing and cloud are equally large domains in their own. Let’s learn when combined together how they benefit a software development company?
Cloud testing environments:
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Private or public environment where the quality of applications deployed in them need to be validated.
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A hybrid environment where the quality of applications deployed in them needs to be validated
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A cloud-based test environment where the quality of applications deployed in the cloud needs to be validated.
4 Cloud-based Software Testing tools
Needless to say, the rising popularity of cloud testing has increased the number of cloud-based testing tools in the current market.
SOASTA CloudTest
The tool enables four types of test automation on a single web platform- mobile functional & performance testing and web-based functional & performance testing. With real-time analytics, it can stimulate millions of geographically dispersed users visiting a website to test the application under huge loads.
LoadStorm
It is a load testing tool used for both web and mobile applications. The tool being pretty easy in terms of use is cost effective. LoadStorm is considered ideal if one wants to check performance under excessive traffic or usage. In addition to this, it is highly scalable and can simulate as many virtual users as required to find the breaking point of a website/app. The tool incorporates a variety of load testing scenarios that are highly customizable.
Nessus
Nessus is widely used as a vulnerability scanner that detects vulnerabilities, misconfigurations and missing patches in a range of devices, firewalls, virtualized systems, cloud infrastructure etc. Numerous threats like viruses, malware, backdoors and web services linking and malicious content can be detected on the accurate basis. In addition to this, it generates scan reports and remediation recommendations in flexible formats including sending targeted emails.
Xamarin test cloud
The UI acceptance testing tool allows writing tests in C# using NUnit testing library through the UITest framework or in Ruby. The tool has the potential to run the test over thousand physical devices and displays full-resolution screenshots of each step, featuring data like CPU and memory usage and test time. With the help of automated builds, it can offer continuous integration.