How Cloud Performance Testing Offers a Cost Advantage Amidst The Economic Recession

The global economic downturn has been a major threat to several organizations in recent times. The pandemic situation followed by the recession has forced several businesses to scale back and shut down temporarily or permanently, which can lead to a severe industrial dropdown. Organizations, in several instances, have compromised on investing in superior tools and human resources required for efficient software testing, which has consequently led to the degrading quality of the application and reduced sales and profitability. However, the economic downswing cannot in any way affect the customer experiences as they expect flawless app performances and user experiences throughout their app-interaction journeys. As a result, organizations must carefully choose the technologies, such as Performance Testing in Cloud Environment, that can assist them in recession-proofing their business and improving revenues while ensuring an excellent brand reputation and customer loyalty.

Read: How leading retailers can maximize performance and online revenue

The value of cloud amidst economic downturns in reducing overall costs

Cloud computing technologies have proven to be a right fit for organizations enabling them to boost performance and productivity with great location and infrastructure flexibility that helps in leveraging resources optimally, thereby optimizing costs.  

Several organizations often lay off employees in different departments and cut down different tools to save costs, but these have a negative impact on the quality of products delivered to end users. With advancing cloud technologies, companies can leverage a cost advantage with the capability of the cloud to support flexible working options, infrastructure, and much more.

Check out: Choosing the right tools for automated mobile app testing

Pay-as-you-go model—Cloud technologies often run on subscription-based models that make it economical for organizations to deploy solutions at a much affordable cost while improving their workflows and final outcomes. 

Enterprises migrating to cloud technologies today can garner new vistas of opportunity for enterprises to streamline and simplify their testing efforts and deliver flawless software products.

Also check: The increasing need for performance testing in web applications

Defining cloud performance testing

Cloud based performance testing refers to the approach of testing applications by leveraging cloud infrastructure. The purpose of the testing is to ensure that the functional and non-functional aspects of the apps are operating as expected. 

The focus on cloud based application performance testing should generally lie on

• Speed, for determining if the app responds quickly
• Scalability, for delineating the maximum user load the app can handle
• Stability, to test whether the app is stable under different loads

Performance testing in the cloud can differ significantly from traditional methodologies. These approaches attempt to measure and evaluate the parameters like system throughput and latency with changing number of concurrent users accessing the application.

Read: Best Practices for Application Performance Testing

Cloud vs on-premise performance testing

Performance testing in a cloud environment is a crucial part of the software development life cycle, helping to identify how a system behaves under different conditions and loads. Performance testing in a cloud environment and on-premise are two approaches used to conduct these tests. Let's explore each of them:

Cloud Based Performance Testing

Cloud based performance testing involves using cloud computing resources to simulate various user loads and test the performance of an application or system. Here are some key points:

Advantages:

• Scalability: Cloud based application performance testing platforms can easily scale up or down based on testing requirements, especially when simulating large user loads.
• Cost-Effectiveness: You can pay for the resources used during the testing period, making it cost-effective for short-term testing needs.
• Geographical Diversity: Cloud providers have data centers in various regions, allowing you to test application performance from different locations.
• Quick Provisioning: Cloud based application performance testing services offer fast provisioning, reducing the setup time for testing.

Disadvantages:

• Internet Dependency: Cloud based application performance testing requires a stable internet connection. If there are network issues, it may affect test results.
• Data Privacy and Security: Many organizations worry about storing their sensitive data on cloud platforms run by third-party companies.
• Long-Term Costs: Cloud based performance testing solutions might become more expensive for prolonged testing than maintaining on-premise infrastructure.

On-Premise Performance Testing

On-premise performance testing involves setting up and conducting performance tests within an organization's data center or infrastructure.

Advantages:

• Data Control: Since the infrastructure is owned and managed in-house, there is more control over sensitive data and security measures.
• No Internet Dependency: As developers conduct the testing on the local network, there is no reliance on Internet connectivity.
• Cost Predictability: Organizations can budget for the hardware and resources required for testing, avoiding unexpected costs.

Disadvantages:

• Scalability Limitations: On-premise infrastructure may have limited scalability compared to cloud platforms, making testing at extremely high user loads challenging.
• Initial Investment: Initially, setting up the infrastructure can be costly.
• Maintenance: Maintaining the hardware and ensuring it remains up-to-date with the latest technology can be time-consuming.

Choosing Between Cloud and On-Premise Performance Testing

The decision to use cloud based or on-premise performance testing depends on several factors, including a budget, the testing scale required, security and data privacy concerns, and the organization's infrastructure capabilities. Many organizations adopt a hybrid approach, utilizing cloud and on-premise resources as needed.

Cloud based performance testing is often preferred for its flexibility, scalability, and ease of setup, making it suitable for organizations with varying testing needs and limited resources. Organizations prioritizing data security or requiring long-term testing may prefer on-premise testing, which can justify the initial investment.

Performance testing in a cloud environment is critical to ensure that applications and systems can handle the expected loads and perform optimally for end users.

What are the different types of cloud performance testing?

Cloud based performance testing can include multiple tests, including: 

Load test: This type of test helps to evaluate if your system's performance is optimum when it is used by a vast number of users creating a heavy load.

Stress test: The stress test allows testers to identify any bottlenecks, roadblocks, and performance issues while handling voluminous requests or actions and ensure that the software works as expected. For this type of test, the software is made to go through the intended traffic volume that helps testers understand precisely how the product operates and take corrective actions.

Also read: Types of software testing and its significance

Latency test: A latency test measures the time consumed for transferring data messages between two points within a cloud network. Latency tests are crucial in networks for low or ultra-low latency requirements. These networks require efficient processing of data in real-time, where information is recorded within nanoseconds of its creation. The lesser the latency or delay, the better the network and subsequent app performance. 

Browser test: Such tests are critical for evaluating the compatibility of browsers with the overall system.

Targeted infrastructure test: In such a test, every component or layer of the app is isolated and tested for the capability to deliver the required performance. This helps uncover any issue that can impact the system's overall performance. 

Failover test: A failover test helps to determine the ability of the system to invite additional resources when faced with heavy traffic and usage to ensure that the end-user experience is not impacted.  

Capacity test: This test is critical for effectively identifying and benchmarking the optimal traffic or load the cloud system can handle. 

Soak test: This type of testing helps measure the system's performance when exposed to heavy traffic for a prolonged period and validates the system's behavior in the production environment.

Check: Client-Side Performance Testing - Metrics to Consider

What are some of the different ways of testing in the cloud?

Cloud based testing often involves complex infrastructure. Here are a few common types of cloud based testing that organizations can execute —

• Testing the whole cloud: In this type, the cloud is perceived as an entity on its own, and it takes into account the major features it offers.
• Testing elements within the cloud: The primary internal features of the cloud are assessed in this type of testing, and accordingly, the tests are executed.
• Testing across the cloud infrastructure: Such tests are executed on different cloud models like public, private, and hybrid clouds, depending on the specifications and requirements of the test.
• Software as a Service (SaaS) Testing the Cloud: SaaS performs tests as per the requirements of the cloud via functional and non-functional tests.

What are the significant benefits that cloud performance testing can provide during the economic downturn? 

Cloud performance testing is critical for enterprises today to enable them to run as expected to deliver the desired end-user experience. Here are the key benefits of cloud performance testing

• Improved scalability with cost advantage: With cloud infrastructure, users can seamlessly access their resources from any device as long as there is a good Internet connection. This allows reduced hardware and software investment that helps to focus precisely on a project's scalability and optimal performance to ensure a flawless user experience while ensuring reduced developmental costs.

• Real-time testing: By leveraging the cloud framework, organizations can leverage data in real time, execute tests on a real-time basis, efficiently eliminate bugs, and identify performance and functional bottlenecks.

• Seamless geographical testing: Performance testing in the cloud makes testing flexible by allowing testing from any geographic location where the application is expected to be available. This not only gives a regional advantage but ensures global scalability. The fast-paced digital transformation, especially post the COVID outbreak, increased the requirement for enterprises to adopt more cloud adoption and cloud-native applications. As a result, organizations significantly require efficient cloud-native performance testing solutions to ensure the optimal performance of their applications.

• Customized testing needs: As new devices are introduced in the market at a rapid pace today, several organizations are shifting to remote, and the employees need not be tethered to their work desks. The usage of mobile devices, tablets, and others has increased significantly for completing daily tasks. At this juncture, cloud infrastructure provides them with the opportunity to efficiently test multiple aspects from their preferred location.

• Platform and environment diversity: Cloud based testing offers diversity within an organization's network environment as cloud technologies have the ability to manage a variety of requests from different clients leveraging different platforms. This capability proves to be beneficial in a hybrid working environment.

• Improved team collaboration: leveraging cloud based testing enables organizations to include DevOps in their workflows efficiently, as it requires robust collaboration between developers and testers. With Cloud performance testing, testers can create test environments with multiple configurations and data in the cloud, automate testing, integrate with development tools, and provide faster feedback and easy setup of devices with DevOps.

• Extensive enterprise app coverage: Though most applications are browser-based today, large organizations require relatively higher computing capabilities. Cloud based application performance testing allows effective testing with support for various internet protocols like .NET, SAP, Java, and others to validate web 2.0 apps.

How HeadSpin helps organizations streamline their cloud performance testing approach?

HeadSpin, an AI-driven testing Platform, enables companies to execute efficient end-to-end testing on both on-premise as well as single-tenant and multi-tenant cloud deployment models and capture critical performance metrics. HeedSpin offers its secure real device cloud, called the global device infrastructure, which allows companies to access thousands of real devices to test mobile apps from 50+ locations. The rich device infrastructure supports organizations in testing different distributed edge nodes or edges.

Following are some of the critical features of HeadSpin's global device infrastructure:

• Access to popular devices for application testing:

The QA teams can seamlessly access real devices of a vast range, including Android, iOS, and desktop browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge and IE, and Opera, to help enterprises ensure optimal performances.

• Multiple deployment cloud:

HeadSpin allows organizations to leverage multiple deployment models, including on-premise, single-tenant cloud, multi-tenant cloud, and create-your-own-lab, to help organizations test and store their test data in convenient locations. The different deployment models assist companies in securely testing the mobile applications of different real devices.

• Easy geolocation testing: 

The HeadSpin Platform allows businesses to test websites from different locations and connect to several real mobiles and browser testing. Organizations can test mobile apps and websites from different locations on real SIM-enabled devices and test the actual user experience in multiple global locations while ensuring security and optimal performance through their single-tenant deployment model.

• Secured cloud environment: 

HeadSpin has achieved SOC 2 Compliance Certificate. The Platform is certified in passive reconnaissance, automated vulnerability scanning, and manual testing to help organizations ensure complete security while gaining optimal performances for their apps.

• Building superior brand reputation and gaining cost advantage:

HeadSpin's performance optimization solution enables companies to improve time-to-market and reduce development cycles that consequently enable them to optimize cost and ensure flawless user experiences. This consequently allows organizations to raise business revenue and profitability with improved sales. 

Conclusion

Organizations are increasingly focusing on deploying efficient performance testing tools today to ensure delivering optimal software performance and end-user experience. Superior quality digital experiences help organizations to restore and enhance brand impression and reputation amongst their clientele and drive revenue. Platforms like HeadSpin can simplify cloud based testing workflows significantly and deliver flawless experiences for their product users.