Going a few years back in time, website development and software engineering were entirely different concepts. However, the introduction of innovations like artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud, DevOps, and QA have all made way for extensive transformation.
Especially, the ever-growing focus on quality assurance and software testing has made quality assurance services a vital part of the software development lifecycle. More importantly, the evolution of QA as a process from manual to automation testing has delivered all the necessary speed to the software testing initiatives.
While manual testing was already adding the necessary precision to software testing for on-prem and cloud, cloud-based test automation has revealed much bigger potential. Especially the availability of a huge number of test environments adds much more depth to test initiatives while shortening the feedback loops, fixing bugs, and quicker releases.
All in all, continuously delivering improved software allows you to create a much more progressive user experience for your end-users. Besides, it serves as a link between improved customer experience and revenue, keeping all things documented.
In this blog, we will aim to underline how cloud-based test automation could help deliver all the necessary speed and scalability to your digital innovations. But before we jump on the same, let us quickly jump on the benefits cloud-based test automation could bring to your business.
Benefits Of Cloud-based Test Automation
Most of the time, QA teams working on cloud test automation are involved in exploratory testing which is used as a tool to refine user journeys for cloud-based products. As the cloud offers increased access to test environments, it enables testers to experience quicker exploratory testing.
Also, the faster and improved access to insights on cloud-based test automation adds to the test coverage, streamlining all the unknowns. Apart from this, exploratory testing could be injected with AI to auto-generate test cases covering possible user journeys which cannot even be guaranteed with manual testing.
On that note, let us quickly jump on the benefits that cloud-based test automation could bring to your digital initiatives:
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Scalability
The best thing about cloud testing is the support it offers on scaling IT resources with minimal disruption. The same goes for cloud-based automation testing as it allows working on any changing requirements of the organization with quick scalability on test execution supporting increase or decrease of testing capabilities.
It, therefore, allows preventing conflicts arising within teams due to limiting or changing resource requirements. Above all, it helps testers to quickly pursue any requested feature or any annoying bug that causes issues on an existing product module which is usually not easy with limited test environments.
Cloud-based automation testing allows teams to meet their testing objectives within the touch of a button. Adding to that, the convenience of the cloud can be witnessed at all times with the immediate availability of testing infrastructure. Ultimately, it solves the hassle of any delays or process limitations that might happen due to a lack of hardware or local installation issues.
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Parallelization
Another significant benefit that comes with cloud-based automation testing is the advantage of scaling test execution. Parallelization allows test teams to spin up multiple pre-configured test environments mimicking different testing parameters of the product under test.
Working on cloud-based test automation even allows you to run different software versions of the same application on virtual machines. On contrast, it even allows running the same software across different operating systems and devices. When testing is completed for these environments, the results are reported back, and the machines can be spun down and destroyed with no user data retained.
Furthermore, it helps optimise and expand the test coverage through exploratory testing. Besides, a model-based approach can be added to the process creating one final model that can simultaneously execute tests for multiple systems under test.
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Improved Collaboration
Whether you are working in an office cubicle or anywhere in the middle of the world, the cloud enables collaboration. And therefore, QA and Dev teams can collaborate in real-time overcoming the limitations of siloed teams.
Cloud-based automation testing allows multiple teams working together in collaboration to experience faster feedback loops and have greater visibility of CI/CD pipeline. All in all, cloud-based test automation helps accelerate the entire process of development to deployment offering a necessary business competitive advantage.
Working on cloud-based test automation? Learn how you can accelerate your performance testing initiatives in the cloud.
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Future-Proofing
When it comes to future-proofing an organization or business process, it refers to people having time and resources to deliver better products. Since the most time spent on the software development lifecycle is consumed on repetitive tasks that are tough to automate, cloud-based test automation offers greater coverage and cuts off any human actions.
The test automation that is leveraged through the cloud allows more dynamic testing and therefore helps create applications with greater potential. Besides, it leaves you enough space to foster resilience testing, understand application response, and overcome any stress points or loopholes.
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Cost Savings
Another major advantage of using cloud-based test automation is saving your investment. Be it spending on server purchases or other essential infrastructure, cloud-based test automation allows you to save costs and meet all the requirements of your growing organization.
Working under the cloud environment eliminates all such stress complementing the hardware and infrastructure requirements. Besides, it even helps you to meet any on-demand goals to adjust your testing capacity. This ultimately helps you to shorten release cycles and improve the overall efficiency of the teams.
Cloud-based Testing: Getting Started
When it comes to the business use cases of cloud-based testing, it requires modelling the benefits associated with better software releases compared to the cloud computing costs. Here are a few things that must be kept in mind when working on cloud-based testing:
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The Speed Of Releases
Since testing is an important aspect of software development, it is vital that cloud initiatives must enhance the benefits of available testing environments. From improved speed on bug fixes to faster releases that come from advanced testing, cloud-based testing must elevate the development lifecycle.
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Financial Viability
Whether you choose cloud or not, there are always certain costs involved. Hence working on cloud-based test automation needs you to understand your pricing structure while keeping a check on any bandwidth for on-demand test environments. It is vital that costs related to the on-demand test environment must balance with the benefit of release. This might need you to work on a cost comparison in order to identify the viability of the cloud test.
Moreover, this even needs the understanding of costs associated with on-prem testing requirements right from upfront costs of the physical infrastructure to maintenance as well as provisioning of test environments as per increasing test demands.
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Public or Private?
The cloud has appeared as a catalyst for advanced software development. However, taking the step towards cloud needs figuring out the difference between the public and private cloud.
On one hand, the public cloud offers collaboration benefits that bring in scalability and parallelization adding value to quicker software releases. However, the public model contains security issues when data is supposed to stay behind firewalls.
On the other hand, the private cloud offers the security layer on your managed network as well as third-party hardware that is associated with your organization. But the only thing that makes the private cloud option a bit less approachable is the cost of ownership, deployment, and maintenance of the cloud network.
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Proof Of Value
The last step to initiate your testing goals in the cloud is working on the proof of value. Compared to on-prem testing, working on the proof of value for the cloud is easy and quick with rapid implementation and predictability. Above all, it offers a greater ability to spin pre-configured test environments during the buying process enabling the building of business cases internally.
Choosing A Cloud-Based Test Automation Service Provider
If you need to foster cloud-based test automation via some popular cloud testing service provider, here are a few things which you must consider:
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Your service provider should understand the seamless integration of the CI/CD pipeline to aid automation. Also, the cloud testing services must help you with shortened feedback loops and quicker deliveries.
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They must be familiar with public and private cloud networks. Especially, when it comes to security on private networks, the service provider must complement containerization and deployment behind firewalls.
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The QA team must support the integration of existing on-prem infrastructure for better test management.
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The QAs must work on real-time reporting to generate insights and have monitoring capabilities that can be accessed to improve user journeys and simplify the application use. It is an important aspect of developing ROI and therefore no compromises on performance must be made.
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The testers must work on non-invasive testing backed with intelligent image recognition and OCR as it helps ensure test scripts survive code changes and UI functionality.
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Automated exploratory testing assistance must always be available to maximize the test coverage to overcome any vague script automation.
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Last but not least, the testers must have hands-on expertise with pre-configured test environments in order to align with the instant spinning of demands.
Find out how our experts at BugRaptors could help you test smarter and faster when you need to foster cloud-based test automation for added speed and scalability.
For more information, reach us through info@bugraptors.com
