With cloud adoption hitting historic highs, many organizations are reaping the benefits of mobile software testing in the cloud. Here at Orasi, we support the use of cloud-based testing and believe it should play an important role in any mobile testing strategy. Nevertheless, we find that for a variety of organizations, fully cloud-based testing is not the answer. Some companies have valid security or compliance concerns. Many others are developing solutions that require “hands-on” testing. In both of these examples, cloud-based automation tools can fall short of the mark.
Rather than abandon the cloud and revert to outdated and inefficient in-house testing models, companies with these concerns can adopt a hybrid cloud environment for testing. To implement this approach, an organization purchases or contracts for cloud-based testing tools but hosts them on its internal server. The result is a virtual, private cloud testing environment residing within the company’s LAN and behind its firewall and other security mechanisms.
From there, they company can connect any devices it owns to the internally hosted testing environment, creating a unified pool of devices―both physical and virtual (emulated) against which testers at any company location (with LAN access) can run cloud-based scenarios. Testers that are collocated with the physical devices can also remove them from the rack (and their cloud connections) and perform crucial manual testing of actions, gestures and other handheld operations. The devices become unavailable to the rest of the company’s testers when they are removed from the cloud connections, but only until testers reconnect them, again.
For this to work most effectively, of course, companies should procure and connect the devices against which their teams test most frequently. For some organizations, this equates to having all on-premise devices in the primary testing location. Team members collocated with the devices then provide assistance to testers in other locations who need to run tests on physical devices. In situations where different team members handle specific tests with unique manual requirements, the pool of devices can be distributed according to need. Everyone will still have access to all connected devices for automated testing through the cloud.
Additionally, companies wishing to adopt a hybrid cloud testing approach should evaluate their third-party testing tools carefully. Current or prospective tools must support internal hosting―both the installation of physical code and the ability to add internal devices to the accessible device pool. If not, the developer should at least have a short timeline to incorporate that functionality. Otherwise, adopting companies will need to look elsewhere for their solutions.
Joe Schulz, Area Vice President of Mobile Testing at Orasi Software