What is cloud testing?
Cloud testing, also known as cloud-based testing, includes testing an application in the cloud for performance, security, scalability, interoperability, multitenancy, etc. Typically, leveraging cloud computing infrastructure reduces the unit cost of computing and specifically increases testing efficiency. Cloud testing also provides compelling benefits of flexibility, scalability, testing complex test environments involving multiple mobile OS, browsers, various platforms, and much more.
Why should businesses leverage cloud testing?
1. Improves security:
Cloud-based security testing is an effective way to improve the application’s security in the cloud. It ensures the identification of security loopholes and helps remove security vulnerabilities that cyber-attackers could otherwise exploit.
2. Enhances performance:
Performance testing in cloud computing ensures that there are no performance bottlenecks in the software and the auto-scaling features work properly so that servers or virtual machines can automatically manage the load handling capacity when traffic utilization levels fluctuate.
3. Checks compliance:
During cloud testing, testers also ensure that the application under test meets all the laws and regulatory compliance, such as data protection laws, data sovereignty laws, data localization laws, access to information laws, etc., necessary for an app to operate in the cloud.
4. Enables seamless app migration:
Cloud testing ensures effective migration of applications on the cloud by removing data migration issues related to incompleteness of migrated data, database errors, and other technical glitches.
5. Ensures proper integration:
Cloud testing removes the integration issues and ensures that the application is compatible with various platforms, properly integrates with servers, and works well in the cloud.
6. Allows testing across various types of clouds:
Cloud testing can be done across various types of clouds, such as public, private, hybrid, community, or their combinations.
Typically, the cloud computing environment also poses many challenges, and usually, these challenges tend to multiply with challenges of testing apps on the cloud. This cloud testing process involves testing apps across modules, and environments to identify various issues. Typically, businesses should understand and overcome these challenges to ensure their business-critical apps perform seamlessly and securely on the cloud.
Common testing challenges faced in cloud computing
1. The complexity of creating a test environment:
One of the major challenges testers faces while testing in the cloud is creating a test environment containing all necessary app configurations and test data. Creating a test environment and managing the test environment is time-consuming and poses a significant challenge.
2. Challenge with testing diverse components:
Another challenge that testers face in cloud computing is testing diverse components that require the preparation of various test cases. The tester needs to identify the problem and prioritize the test cases, which consumes a lot of time and delays the delivery.
3. Security and privacy concerns:
Though cloud providers offer great security, data backup, and data recovery options, the risk of security breaches still exists. While conducting security testing manually, the testers can miss out on some security bugs; therefore, the chances of human-prone errors act as a great challenge for testers.
4. Compliance issues:
Compliance with legal regulations and standards is another challenge that cloud testers have to look at while testing in the cloud. Non-compliance of apps with these standards can lead to high penalties and sometimes even monetary and reputation loss.
5. Integration testing issues:
While performing the integration testing in the cloud, the test is performed on various components, such as network, database, systems, devices, servers, etc. Since testers have no control over the environment in the cloud testing, the chances of a database crash, any other breakdown, or server downtime might occur.
6. Performance issues:
If the network bandwidth offered by cloud services is low, it hampers the testing and delivery of apps in the cloud.