There are so many reasons why cloud is the way to go. From the customer's point of view if they loose or break their device, they buy a new one. They can simply sync back up with the cloud, & their data would be magically restored. This is one of the key differentials and a business competitive advantage if you will.
From a tester's point of view. It's very interesting to observe the interaction between the cloud environment and your test device in real time literally. The experience is heavenly (No pun intended). It's an ideal marriage for smart phones, and makes one wonder why all the "Smart phones" are no on the cloud.
Most importantly, if you add to this mix, some social-networking elements and the sky is the limit. You can see where your friends are, you can share real-time information, photos, videos, testing etc.
These say we see a great many users applying our cloud to testing purposes. Utilizing a public cloud for App/Dev testing is probably the best use case, there is today for using the Cloud. No test software, no Servers, no maintenance fees, no power cost, etc.
Here are some real-world examples:
- A hardware vendor of firewall/VPN units from the US spins up virtual versions of the product in our cloud for development purposes and for client trials. Another advantage is that you don't have to wait for the appropriate environment to become available - you can just fire one up as you need, then shut it down when you're not using it, which saves money since you only pay for what you use.
- A mobile application developer conducts scale testing on new apps.A Handset Cloud meets mobile web and application developer's never ending pursuit to deliver high quality mobile applications and services in a challenging market, primarily bought on by the plethora of devices, cross platforms and networks worldwide. It is an excellent platform to generate operational saving while maintaining a competitive advantage in an extremely dynamic mobile market.
- A bank runs their test system in our cloud for testing and development for onward deployment to their in-house production environment.
- The availability of virtual machines of various configurations that can be saved, template, launched, and reset. This makes it easy to setup, use, re-use and run test setups. Easy an universal availability of a potentially large number of machines, perhaps orchestrated through automation, is also something new, making even large load tests accessible to all. Some clouds have a notion of geo or region that can be interesting when simulating a distributed user population. Entire test setups can be templated and given a push-button gui or an api to provide wide access to complex test setups, making it easy to integrate complex automation into various processes, like continuous integration and build systems in engineering. Many, many greater possibilities.
So it is clear that Cloud testing is one of the hot trends in Software testing though it comes with its own challenges.