On Cloud 9

Users need not know about or possess expertise in the underlying technology
or infrastructure being used in the cloud. It encompasses infrastructure as a
service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), software as a service (SaaS), and
all recent technological innovations that rely on the Internet to satiate
computing needs of end users. The services over a cloud can be accessed via
varied sources such as a web browser, while the software and data centers can
lie on the servers.

This trend that Gartner reports as one of the top ten strategic technologies
might sound nebular, but its not so unclear when we try to view its value
additions with respect to ITbe it software development, testing, or security.
It is one of the best solutions to the most significant requirements in the IT
industry: a means to increase capacity or add capabilities on-the-fly without
investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel or procuring license for
new softwares. Its the era of multi-core cloud computing. There are hundreds
and thousands of users running simultaneously against thousands of CPUs. There
are many processes that are active at one point of time. This is the kind of
infrastructure and scalability that a cloud network can establish. Although cost
is a likely benefit for small companies, the biggest benefits are flexibility
and scalability, which not only reduce barriers, but also help these companies
to grow quickly.

For testing organizations, there will be both new challenges as well as
opportunities. Testing the multi-layered architecturefrom the application to
the cloud service provideris something which testers will have to become adept
at. A more recent example is that, using a new cloud infrastructure such as the
Google App Engine, organizations can now run their applications on Googles
infrastructure. It is much easier to deploy applications on a cloud. One does
not have to bother about the data, instead you could concentrate on building the
application and its functionality.

Its effect on testing is that the end user experience is being impacted by
the cloud provider and all other third party vendors involved. With the help of
cloud computing, testers can access and afford enormous amounts of computing
technology and power. And thats exactly whats needed in testing. It helps
organizations test hundreds of devices in a more comfortable and cost-effective
manner. For applications running on clouds, some of the things to test are:
network performance, server performance, database performance, software
performance on the application, the way its cached in the client. The challenge
of testing across all heterogeneous components and geographical boundaries to
identify bugs/problems is huge. The platform could be anya mobile device, a
desktop, or mainframe, etcbut quality has to be of supreme consideration!

According to IDC, spending on IT cloud services is expected to increase
threefold, to $42 bn by 2012. Its certain that over the next five years, every
testing vendor will try to leverage the cloud. It seems that it would lead to a
new generation of testing companies. Theres no denying the fact that cloud
computing is going to be the next big thing thats going to revolutionize the
way we utilize a service.

Minesh Upadhyaya

The author is vice president, global testing services, QA InfoTech

maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in