The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the work-from-home situation have severely challenged and amplified development issues for IT enterprises all around the globe. Developers are forced to analyze innovative strategies for maintaining their day-to-day actions to guarantee performance remains on track.
Even though development can be done remotely, testing these developments with the right algorithm and infrastructure can be challenging.
The difficulty in remote testing is obtaining efficient risk mitigation when several dependencies testings rely on are jeopardized. Therefore, enterprises strive to adopt new solutions that help overcome the gaps in operational models, which directly impede test delivery.
Nevertheless, enterprise development applications are progressing in complexity, making it challenging for QA teams to create and maintain enterprise testing infrastructures that simulate real-time conditions.
However, cloud computing builds unique possibilities and opportunities for testing companies by presenting the operational flexibility and scalability needed to deliver test cases or scripts.
The worldwide adoption of cloud models continues to enhance enterprises across all industries. Cloud-based software testing is no longer considered a developing trend; instead, its potential is widely accepted in testing complex software without the need for infrastructure.
Understanding The Steps In Cloud Testing
Cloud computing provides a cost-effective and flexible means of testing with the help of scalable computing power and diverse online platforms/services. This can be extremely helpful in remote working because the cloud eliminates in-house architecture by providing computer hardware/software resources, networks, computing infrastructures, diverse application services, business processes, artificial intelligence, and much more.
There are 7 steps in performing cloud testing, the steps are:
Step1: Deriving scenarios from users: User scenarios are established in this step, and these scenarios usually have functional objectives that users require and the expected outcome from a user perspective.
Step 2: Developing test cases: Here, the test cases are defined for testing; these test cases depend on user requirements and are developed by the tester.
Step 3: Choosing a suitable cloud service vendor: here the service provider is selected for doing and performing the testing needed. Choosing the provider is not an easy step, and it depends on the user and the infrastructure of the software to be validated. Many providers such as Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure provide tools to test the cloud.
Step 4: Establishing the needed infrastructure and setting up a cloud server: The purpose of this step is to establish testing traffic of the web with the assistance of cloud service providing companies that include Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS.
Step 5: Initializing the testing process: Once the cloud testing model is leveraged, several types of testing can be performed during the testing process. But this depends on the contract between users and providers. The infrastructure, capabilities, and services of the cloud are used to perform or execute the testing for software.
Step 6: Define testing objectives: Testing objectives are reviewed to see if they are met and pleased after testing is finished. Usually, the main objectives that are asked include some of the following or all of them.
Step 7: Submitting the outcomes: Outcomes are delivered to the user or organization that asked for testing. After the outcomes are delivered back to the requesting side, analyses are made, and critical decisions are made.
How The Cloud Helps Software Testing Easier
Numerous IT companies and software developers are not completely aware of cloud-based software testing and its multiple benefits. Few benefits are mentioned below:
1. Reducing the costs
Testing as a Service allows IT and software developers to initialize virtual environments where tests will be conducted in the cloud without the need to have licenses. Therefore, QA teams will not have to buy the entire testing cloud resources or testing tools but can lease and install them whenever needed. This minimizes the costs of testing and increases sharing of resources and the use of services.
2. Widespread environment of testing and the use of virtualization
Due to the cloud’s scalable and easily adaptable nature, cloud-based software testing can provide testing environments and software as a service solution for virtual and real computing resources. These advantages are useful for measuring the scalability of SaaS and load or performance testing by providing simulation for testing, especially for large-scale tests.
3. Supporting on-demand automated services testing
TaaS Supports on-demand automated services testing that can be initialized to perform online testing all the time and from anywhere.
4. Pay per use or pay per test
Unlike traditional software testing, in TaaS, consumers and end-users are responsible for their deployed services depending on a predefined service pattern and cost measurement.
This is because users leverage a pay–as–test model that will include all the test cases, test scripts, architectures, etc., required for performing the test. This model supports many flexible services for TaaS end users to face active business and service needs.
Conclusion
Cloud-based test automation services bring unique possibilities to enterprises that are challenged during the pandemic situation. The main advantage of cloud testing is that it will only increase in potential even after the pandemic and more companies will realize the multiple benefits of cloud services.
Enterprises must leverage quality engineering skillsets to develop multiple coding languages, architectural awareness, and a detailed understanding of the cloud principles to remain credible and valuable in the future.
