Benefits of Load Testing on the Cloud

Benefits of Load Testing on the Cloud

As today’s business world goes under constant development, the demand for more advanced, secure and constantly available software increases. This calls for continuous software development, and parallel to that, testing. While existing testing procedures are being used, new ones are also introduced. Internet-based new testing processes use online platforms for data storage and cloud-based testing is an example to this. But what is cloud-based testing?

Before going into that, an explanation of cloud computing is required for easier understanding. Cloud computing is a virtual and online platform that provides a range of services that requires little to no on-premise hardware. Cloud testing is a testing procedure which makes use of this concept.

There are several types of cloud testing, and now that you have an idea of what it is, we can talk about Load Testing, which can be done with or without cloud-based computing. But what is Load Testing and why should anyone opt for a Load Testing solution on the cloud, rather than an on-premise solution?

Load Testing

In regular conditions (when no other parameter changes except time), demand for a product is considered constant within a selected period of time. For example, there is always demand for ice cream during summer, which is, as mentioned, considerably constant if all days of summer are the same. But what if there was a spike, a sudden increase in the demand for ice cream, due to, let’s say, extremely hot weather. And how exactly would markets cope with this spike? Their supplies could easily run out if they are not prepared for such a demand, and they can no longer give service to the customers. Service outages, possible customer dissatisfaction, and trading losses are highly undesired on a larger scale of doing business.

Businesses who are concerned about increasing their profits, simply don’t have the luxury to be unavailable when there is high demand for them. Load Testing is a testing procedure which provides a detailed diagnosis of the software showing the demand that the software can endure, to the point where it cannot. There are two ways to carry out Load Tests, which are:

On-Premise Load Testing:

On-premise testing is a way of testing that requires physical storage of data on-premise. This is most undesired because of the space required for the physical storage, and because of the initial budget it requires. However, in this case there is a more controllable environment due to the fact that businesses do not have to give their data to an online cloud platform.

On the other hand, on-premise testing is biased, because the environments provided are in ideal conditions, whereas in real world, every computer has a different set-up than that environment and businesses cannot account for that variable.

Cloud-Based Load Testing

Even though on-premise testing seems like the better way just because it has more control over data, there are more advantages in using Cloud-Based Load Testing. Let’s see what these advantages are;

1. No Problems due to Hardware: On-premise testing requires hardware to be present, and hardware needs constant maintenance. Hardware requires initial set-up to even be able to load your data and start testing. However, cloud testing gives no room for any trouble with the hardware and lets businesses load their data and start their testing processes immediately. Cloud testing also does not take any space on-premise since it’s remotely controlled.
2. Cost Effectiveness: As mentioned, hardware needs initial set-up and constant maintenance. This initial setting up process incurs a high cost from the very beginning, and constant maintenance is also an additional burden on the budget.

Load Testing requires a great deal of computing power which can only be provided with more hardware, if an on-premise solution is selected. With cloud testing, it is easy to scale the computing resources and change it easily depending on the needs. Since cloud testing uses utility-style pricing, businesses only pay for what they use.

1. Reliability: On-premise testing processes may fail due to problems such as not having enough computing power. In this respect, cloud testing provides more reliability compared to on-premise testing. Cloud testing ensures a sufficient computing power when high number of virtual users are required for Load Tests. Time scheduling for load tests is also possible for better accuracy in diagnoses.
2. Flexibility: On-premise testing lets businesses have more control over their data in contrast to cloud testing, however; cloud testing lets businesses load or unload their data according to their preferences, which makes up for this disadvantage.
3. Easy implementation: With on-premise testing, businesses need to have a team to set up and maintain a back-end, on the contrary, cloud testing has no back-end technicalities that businesses have to worry about. Cloud testing is a 100% online platform which is easily manageable.
4. Worldwide readiness: Businesses that serve or want to serve globally will need to test across different geographies. Using on-premise testing, businesses can test locally, but they have to set up different systems to simulate the tests if they want to conduct it in different locations. Compared to this, cloud testing enables businesses to carry out tests across different geographies since cloud data centers are located all around the world. With cloud testing, adding virtual users in different locations is possible.

Evaluating these reasons, we can easily come to a conclusion that a Cloud-based Load Testing option is far more advantageous compared to On-premise.

Loadium offers a Cloud-based Load Testing solution, click here to check it out.