The last months it’s been very quiet on this blog. Both Andréas and I had some issues with time and motivation. It’s something that happens with writing a blog. But as the vacations come to an end (I’m still going in September) we need to pick up the pace and share our thoughts. For me the past few months have been very busy. A lot of my free time has been consumed by writing a book. On June 7, 2011 me eBook “TMap NEXT Testing Clouds” was launched. And next month I will give a presentation on this on a seminar from my employer. And let’s see what comes next…

This book is different from its TMap predecessors. Whereas the books in the TMap series are handbooks with step-by- step information, this book is an innovation, about testing clouds for the early adopter. It describes the cloud business model for testing, business technology and steps we took in cloud projects. It can be seen as a successor of the Seize the Cloud book Sogeti published in late March of 2011. Where that book lacks discussion of testing, this book carries on to focus on testing.

Cloud, at it simplest, is internet-based computing with the use of shared resources and software provided on demand with reduced management effort. As a service it is still at an early stage, but the growth of cloud-based computing is outstripping even the most optimistic predictions. It’s early 2011 and almost all forecasts of ‘the’ most important IT technologies name cloud computing in their Top 3.

That growth is based on a compelling value proposition: speed to market, agility to bring forward or retire service, and the chance to move expenditure from CapEx into OpEx. Although the cloud is still in its infancy, it is increasingly clear that the cloud model will supplement, if not entirely replace, mainframe and client/server installations in the years to come.

In my view, the cloud is a business model or platform on which testing must be carried out just like any other service. It enables convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. Those resources, from networks, servers, storage, applications and services, can be rapidly provisioned and released – thereby drastically reducing management effort and service provider interaction.

The cloud is not only an IT opportunity, but a strategic business opportunity; it creates the ability to get the business in charge of IT and change from Information Technology (IT) to Business Technology (BT). But the cloud market is still in a very early stage and will continue to grow and evolve. And as the Cloud Era emerges, testing will change! Not only for information systems, but also for testing the infrastructure, cloud-enabled applications, and the ability to have instant deployable test infrastructure. Testing applications on the cloud is the same as testing applications on a traditional infrastructure. Only what is tested is different.

I have written this book with great enthusiasm. And I feel that using the cloud for testing has a lot of potential for how we use testing services in the future. It will give us testers the ability to be the Generation Now. I believe this book will interest those people who are part of that generation, and that it will help them in using the cloud for the benefit of testing.

The book can be downloaded in ePub and PDF from here: http://www.sogeti.com/publications.

1. Tamron A09 review Says:
   May 7th, 2012 at 11:46

   Tamron A09 review…

   [...]New times, new motivation, new (e)book… :: Software Testing and more[...]…