Cloud Testing: don’t let the cloud turn to ‘thunder’

August 30 11:05 2017 by Helen Johnson Print This Article

Generating new traffic, providing new services to be sold, and increasing the profit, the cloud grows fast and requires new business models and coordinated the work of several players. In order to achieve success in the market, the quality of cloud solutions and services should be very high.

Being a platform for running applications over the network, the cloud involves the collaboration of three players that will together ensure proper operation of the solution. First of all, a cloud provider enables cloud services. In order to ensure a smooth and flawless interaction between end-users and the cloud, a communication service provider called cloud carrier is required. Buying the services offered by the cloud provider, a cloud consumer gives users an opportunity to utilize the specially developed cloud solutions.

The level of user experience depends mainly on the cloud provider and carrier. They both define the key performance indicators (KPIs) including service-oriented and resource ones that affect the quality of ready cloud solutions. For example, unstable service availability, unmanaged processor utilization, and long delivery time are the signals of poor service quality that cause negative user experience.

According to the National Institute of Standards (NIST), cloud computing should possess five main attributes, e.g., self-service on-demand, measured service, rapid elasticity, broad network access, resource pooling, to provide their key benefits. Cloud computing helps the consumer to reduce expenses as he pays only for those resources that he uses and the payment is monthly based. Besides, the development procedure does not require additional in-house teams and own separate infrastructure.

In order to establish and maintain a strong and competitive business, cloud solutions should overpass complex assessments of their quality including the verification of software operation as well as data centers and cloud.

How to test?

The cloud testing life cycle includes the following steps:

design of test scenarios
development of test cases
choice of a cloud service provider
infrastructure setting
cloud servers leverage
test run
analysis of test results

During testing in the cloud, the QA team faces several challenges that can be solved by applying particular techniques and methods. As a number of companies/users can utilize the clouded data, testers verify its availability and accessibility without any delays. Checking provider capacities, e.g., the efficiency and assurance of services, is an inevitable part of cloud testing.

The proper work of cloud solution requires a smooth operation of a server, network, database, and software. Test cases should cover not only the functionality of every component but also their location. Besides, in order to detect problems, testers check how data is cached in the client.

By verifying the system integrability, the QA team ensures a flawless connection of the solution with third-party software. Interoperability issues may cause application crashes, breakdown of both server and network.

In order to minimize the issues and ensure a high-profit revenue, each cloud solution should overpass complex testing. Besides, as cloud computing becomes more popular, more and more cloud solutions appear, thus, market competition increases. So, top quality is among the main factors that guarantee market success.