The cloud model of testing
Jul29
Cloud computing is an emerging phenomenon that offers enormous advantages, such as shorter time to market, flexible computing capabilities and limitless power, but the cloud market, still in a very early stage, continues to grow and evolve.
But cloud computing is much more than technology, cutting costs or getting more agile. The cloud model is a new business model, a new way of thinking and doing IT as a business instead of a technology! The cloud business model. More modular, incremental, selective, collaborative and with a value proposition based on financial liquidity and operational flexibility [Forrester, 2010]. This has a lot of (side) effects, also on software testing…
New model for testing
The way we do business around testing will change also. Not the way we test, but how we deliver it. The market will be more focused on value driven, agile, modular and flexible solutions from test service providers. These providers need to create more ‘building blocks’ around how they deliver services: testing. Testing will also become a service, Software Testing as a Service (has a nice buzz ring to it).
Software Testing as a Service
Software Testing as a Service (STaaS) was coined by my colleague Leo van der Aalst in 2008, but his ideas didn’t go as far as I would think of today. In Leo’s proposal all testing was done by a service provider on demand at the scale as needed by the client. My idea goes further.
Software testing needs to be even more flexible, from the test manager to the test engineer, from the system test environment to the performance test environment, from the security scan to the full usability test and from audits to end-2-end tests. And everything can be done separate and fully integrated with one other. This creates a full cloud model for testing. With the possibility to be fully standardized, agile and elastic to help the client when needed; a full service consisting of several building blocks.
July 30th, 2010 at 12:28
Good article.I totally agree with you that testing should be flexible.Each and every step during the testing should be done separately and fully integrated with one other.
February 5th, 2012 at 22:36