Letter from the Editor – December 2013

If you are reading this issue, you are probably aware of the impact on the business world of cloud computing.

Most people do not have a good grasp on what the cloud is or how people and products can use it. BTW, you are already a cloud user. If your email is stored somewhere “on the internet”, like YahooMail, Gmail, Hotmail – you are using the cloud. If you use an online tax service, TurboTax or others – you use that software-as-a-service in the cloud. This is where they calculate your tax and store your tax data.

If you use or share Google docs, store or transfer files using Dropbox, or stream movies on Netflix, you are interacting with the cloud.

From SalesForce to Groupon to LinkedIn, the rapid growth of all things mobile is driving cloud development. Many different forces are converging to push applications, products and services into the cloud. 

As is often the case for new technologies, test teams are at the end of the information trail. What cloud architecture issues need to be tested, what services need to be tested, what SLAs need to be tested? The explosion of devices and appliances impact compatibility and UI testing.

We need to better understand what the cloud is, what people mean when they use phrases like a cloud of APIs, personal cloud, hybrid cloud, etc.

On the other hand, remember – cloud is delivery, not development. The differences between cloud development and other development implementations is a very hot topic in the dev. world. Forrester’s 10 Cloud Predictions for 2013 include Developers waking up to the fact that development isn’t all that different in the cloud.

Many testers say testing things in the cloud is no different than web testing, thick server, thin client testing. It’s no different, or the difference is in the specific testing issues like scalability, security, performance. There is no difference in functionality, cross browser/mobile UI and usability, localization- most aspects of testing remain the same. Cloud is delivery, not development.

In this issue we try to demystify the cloudy cloud. The articles and the glossary, in addition to past articles and publications on cloud computing give you a broad and better understanding of the testing implications around cloud computing.

In my article I outline how to approach SLAs when working in the cloud; SmartBear’s Ole Lesmar looks at some special considerations that should be applied to applications running in the cloud; Ben Rothke reviews the book Testing Cloud Services: How to Test Saas, Paas and Iaas; Chris Riley of Cloudshare tackles issues relating to software and hardware licensing for cloud projects and LogiGear’s Joe Luthy emphasizes that the right skills and experience is essential for designing tests for large-scale cloud deployments.

You can view past cloud articles here and our 2014 editorial calendar here.

We’re always open to new submissions!

As holidays approach and we finish 2013, we very much look forward to a bigger, brighter, happier coming new year!

Michael Hackett

Senior Vice President, LogiGear Corporation

Editor in Chief

Michael Hackett
Michael is a co-founder of LogiGear Corporation, and has over two decades of experience in software engineering in banking, securities, healthcare and consumer electronics. Michael is a Certified Scrum Master and has co-authored two books on software testing. Testing Applications on the Web: Test Planning for Mobile and Internet-Based Systems (Wiley, 2nd ed. 2003), and Global Software Test Automation (Happy About Publishing, 2006). He is a founding member of the Board of Advisors at the University of California Berkeley Extension and has taught for the Certificate in Software Quality Engineering and Management at the University of California Santa Cruz Extension. As a member of IEEE, his training courses have brought Silicon Valley testing expertise to over 16 countries. Michael holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

The Related Post

How do you test software? How do you validate it? How do you find bugs? These are all good questions anyone on your project team or anyone responsible for customers may ask you. Can you articulate your test strategy─not your test process, but explain your approach to testing? I find that this can be a ...
“Why do we need to understand a bunch of test methods? I write test cases from user stories or requirements, automate what I can and execute the rest manually, and its fine.” If this is your situation: good for you. If you are time crunched, if your automated tests have lost relevance, are hard to ...
Hi everyone and welcome to our fourth edition of LogiGear Magazine. This month we finish Michael Hackett’s piece on “Agile in Testing” with part five, Tools.
Our plan for the December LogiGear Magazine was to have a forward-looking Trends and Challenges issue. However, whilst assembling our September issue on SMAC, we realized the momentum SMAC was gaining in the industry. We had a large amount of content on our hands from a range of excellent contributors. Thus, we decided to split ...
As we settle into autumn, we’re taking the time to start some new traditions. This is LogiGear magazine’s first issue on SMAC. SMAC—social, mobile, analytics and cloud. We will be doing more issues in the next few years on these topics since so much of the product world is moving to this development stack.
Digital Transformation and IT Modernization projects have shifted into high gear during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tough on some teams is having to do more with less and speed up projects on reduced budgets due to the resulting COVID-19 business climate. On the other hand, other companies are adding funding and pressing the schedule under the ...
Hello everyone – I’m hoping each one of us is having a great October. This time of the year is always my favorite, with the changing of the seasons, Fall was always my favorite time of year; it signified change and renewal – but I don’t want to digress to much from what’s going on ...
I led the Editor’s Note in our very first mobile issue with “Everything is mobile”, but it is now way beyond what we thought. Mobile has come to mean only the smart phone, mobility is the word that describes everything a smart phone enables you to do. Mobility is more than a device! Mobility is ...
Everything is mobile. What else can we say? Everything. If your product or service is currently not, it will be very soon. As Apple says: “There’s an app for that.” There is an app for everything. The race for mobile apps has consumed the software development world. I did a few projects at Palm Computing in the ...
In our continuing effort to be the best source of information for keeping testers and test teams current, we have another issue to explore testing in Agile development. As Agile evolves, systemic problems arise and common rough situations become apparent. We want to provide solutions. For anyone who has worked on Agile projects, especially if ...
I have been excited about this issue since I included it in the 2011 editorial calendar. This issue of LogiGear Magazine dives into an exploration of agile automation—from the most efficient methods for test automation, to skill sets and better preparation for test teams, and even to understanding the variety of tools in question. We ...
As fast as Mobile is growing, the platform is still immature and is evolving at a very rapid pace. While there are whole countries that have migrated large government services to mobile, countries ranging from Estonia to Turkey to Kenya have many longtime mobile users have yet to use mPay or other mobile payment systems. ...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Stay in the loop with the lastest
software testing news

Subscribe