This document discusses taking software testing to the cloud. It begins by defining cloud computing as an economic model where computing resources are provided as an on-demand service. The document then outlines benefits of cloud-based testing such as lower costs, pay-per-use model, scalability, and auto-provisioning of resources. It also discusses current adoption trends showing testing is well-suited for the cloud. While cost savings are a main driver, other advantages include standardized infrastructure, collaboration between distributed teams, and faster analysis. The document concludes cloud-based testing can help speed time to market and lower costs if used intelligently on a pay-as-you-go basis.

1. Taking testing to “Cloud”
Authors:
Vipin Jain and Anubha Jain
Abstract
Look around in various IT companies, flip pages of some IT magazine, read blogs, see forums
and you will be sure to find the today’s buzz word, the Cloud. You cannot find a word that has
created so much of ripples than the Cloud. Very dramatically, the thinking process on providing
computing resources has been shifted to Cloud computing. With this shift of focus, a lot of
confusion has accumulated along the way in people’s mind. Companies are taking this concept
very seriously. Many have moved to cloud, and those who are still on the “ground” are planning
to move to cloud in next couple of years.
People are still confused. They still are not comfortable with the Cloud thought. You ask anyone
what a cloud service is and you still won’t get a very confident answer. Even if you get an
answer, ask what benefits they offer and what are the disadvantages at stake, and you can see the
person will be uncomfortable answering this. Make him skip the discussion by asking how
secure they are, and it will be end of discussion. When it comes to testing applications, we are
not fully sure whether to adopt the cloud approach of testing or not. What are the benefits we get
and what are the hurdles on the way?
Let’s take a closer look at the Cloud and how it can benefit out day today testing activities.
So what is a Cloud?
Cloud computing is a business and economic model. This model has been successfully deployed
and executed for various material commodities since its inception, but in the recent years it has
been formalized for IT products and services’.
Let me try and explain the basic difference between a Cloud service and a Non-Cloud service.
Consider that you have to move from one place to another. You can use your car OR use the
services of a Taxi. Both of these vehicles have several similarities
 Both are automobiles, having very similar structure and machinery.
 Both provide basic functionality of transferring people / goods from one place to other.
So where lies the difference?
The difference is in the business model for the service provided by them.
 When the car is owners, the owner has to pay for the fuel, regular maintenance and even
possibly a garage. In turn, the car provides the service solely to the owner - you.
 When the car is a Taxi, the service provided by the taxi cab can be described as ‘Travel
as a service’. Who owns the car and who pays the maintenance is not your concern. As a
customer, you just have to pay to travel from your place to another desired place. No
maintenance fees and no parking fees need to be paid by you. This responsibility lies with

2. the cab driver.
The Cloud is synonymous with the phrase ‘On Demand’. You pay only on demand (when you
require it.)
Fig 1: TaaS or ‘Travel as a service’ – A Metro Cab service
Cloud gained momentum when IT industry got associated with it. Today, we find that there is a
huge range of products and services available on demand. All are “As a service” e.g. ‘Games as a
service’, ‘Java as a service’, ‘Storage as a service’ and the list is endless.
How Testing and Cloud work together?
Cloud-based testing offers a remarkable combination of low costs, pay-per use model and
elimination of initial capital expenditures. The benefits, however, are more than just cost
effectiveness. The non-cost factors include on-demand flexibility, a respite from holding various
infrastructure assets, enhanced collaboration, higher levels of efficiency and, most importantly,
reduced time to-market for key business applications. Economically the vendor and end user gets
huge benefits from the Cloud. This comes directly from reduced subscription prices of any
product or service.
Other benefits are:
 Cloud apps are scalable: The elastic business model, as it is popularly known as, can be
customized based on the requirement
 Auto-Provisioning: Depending on needs of end users, various Cloud vendors provide and
withhold the offerings in a manner which is in a automatic and self-serving format.
 Unlimited resources: Atleast the end user thinks and feels this. The services / products are
available as and when they are demanded and in the required quantity
The Cloud computing model should be coined as ‘Green Model’ as it maximizes usage of
resources and minimizes wastage making it environment friendly.
Current state of testing in cloud

3. Many companies are still taking a cautious approach with cloud computing. This is not the case
with testing however. They are largely ready for testing in cloud and following reasons will
account for that readiness:
 As we all know, testing is not a one time, but a periodic exercise and each project will
require a new environment to be set up. If a company creates a Test lab, it typically sit
unused for longer periods, resulting in a waste of cost, electricity and space. Lots of
published reports indicate that more than 50% of the technical infrastructure for testing
remains underutilized.
 Since testing still being considered as a must but non-critical activity for business, taking
testing in cloud premises is pretty safe as it doesn’t include important company data and
has minimum impact on the organizational business activities.
 Today’s applications are increasingly getting dynamic, more complex, distributed across
continents and more component-based. Testing them is getting more challenging. For
instance, with mobile and Web applications testing, testing needs to be done for multiple
operating systems and regular critical updates, various browsers and their versions,
variety of hardware and a large pool of concurrent users to understand real time
performance. It is pretty difficult to follow the age-old approach of creating so many in-
house testing environments. These will become very complex and will need huge capital
and resources.
Fujitsu in a 2010 research suggested that testing ranked second (57%) as the most likely
workload to be put into the cloud after Web sites (61%). The on-demand provisioning by Cloud
addresses all the above explained issues with one click. On top of it, the effort and resources
saved by using cloud can be redeployed for core business functions.
The Cost Factor

4. Economic benefits are the main factor influencing companies to take testing to cloud. Another
2010 survey by IDC hinted the same. As the global economy recesses, companies continue to
find ways to regulate costs and improve ROIs. Cloud testing reduces the unit cost of computing.
Small and medium-size businesses that cannot afford high costs find cloud-based testing as a
new lifeline. The companies no longer need to invest in infrastructure and software licenses.
They also do not need to worry about various configuration issues and maintenance of test
environments, and pay only for what they use.
Beyond cost Benefits?
Cloud is not all about cost saving. There are lot more benefits companies can extract using it.
- A standard infrastructure and pre-configured software is available, reducing efforts in
getting servers and licenses.
- On-demand provisioning helps companies to think forward instead of spending time to
set up test labs. All testing resources required for testing exist within the system and can
be called upon instantaneously.
- Better analysis and control are offered to test teams to build and execute their tests and
identify the bottlenecks. This helps in identifying possible runtime bugs a lot before they
are actually found.
- It’s a great concept in motion between geographical distributed teams. Once a tester logs
in and runs a test, the results are available over the cloud. The developer can then assess
it and fix over the cloud itself. This eliminates back-and-forth communication between
teams.

5. Limitations
- Lack of standards: Absence of universal/ standard solutions to real world problems is a
big issue. Each cloud provider can have its own hardware, operating models and prices
and may or may not offer any interoperability. This poses a huge challenge for companies
when they plan to switch to a new vendors
- Security issues: Security in the public cloud is still a huge concern because the data may
be stored in a location which is outside a company’s legal and functioning jurisdiction.
- Usage: The everyday usage costs increases very rapidly if testing is done without a
proper usage of cloud-based test. Though pay-as-you-go clouds are used, it can be
expensive if the testing is out of sync with requirements.
- Performance: Its always an issue since public clouds are used by many users in parallel.
Situations got created a company had to wait for the required bandwidth to execute their
tests.
Conclusion
This paper tries to explain the benefits and limitations associated with taking testing to Cloud.
We have tried to explain that why companies should start small and gain confidence slowly to
capture maximum benefits of cloud-based testing. Once they believe that it has led them in
speeding time to market, lowering of costs and ensuring standards compliance, they can go big.
Using of pay-as-you-go or on-demand services intelligently and efficiently, companies can
reduce cost of operation and ownership. Companies should pilot cloud-based testing as early as
they feel comfortable before going to mainstream testing.
Bibliography
- “Determine if a Cloud is Usable,” blog post, Bloomberg Businessweek, Jan. 31, 2011.
- “Solving the Challenges of Enterprise Mobile Application Development With Cloud-
Based Testing,” blog post,
- CIO, Feb. 17, 2011.
- Rajagopal Sattaluri, “Testing Considerations for Application Migration to Cloud
Computing,”
- Cloud Computing Journal, Feb. 8, 2011.
- “Cloud Computing: The Good, Bad and the Ugly,” blog post, Dynamic Data Inc., Feb. 1,
2011.
- “Cloud Testing, A Growing Trend,” blog post, Sonata Software, April 4, 2010.

6. - Nivedan Prakash, “Cloud Testing: Attracting Demand,” Express Computer, Feb. 1, 2010.