Cloud-Based Automation Testing: Challenges and Solution

Cloud-based automation testing is considered the process where developers make use of cloud computing environments for rapidly testing the systems or software components to verify intended functionality. It helps you iterate your applications and deploy them faster.

As the demand for virtualization, edge computing, containerization, and other such cloud spending attributes are increasing, the pressure is significantly higher over the QA departments. Therefore, cloud automation testing is considered a vital tool for all cloud-native application developers, aiming to maintain product integrity across a rising number of devices, versions, and platforms.

But as efficient as cloud automation testing is, it poses some challenges for the QA testers in detecting the potential security loopholes, supporting faster iteration, and fixing bugs. So, this article is dedicated to educating you on a few cloud-based automation testing challenges and solutions.

What is Cloud-Based Automation Testing?

Cloud-based automation testing is a process where the developers make use of cloud computing environments for rapidly testing the systems or software components to verify the intended functionality. The teams are destined to run automated parallel tests over the cloud to be able to find and fix potential bugs.

Such an approach will also be helpful in stress testing the core systems and increase the efficiency of QA processes. It is far better than manual regression tests, which involve a large team and a lot of time to ease this tedious job. To be free from this daunting task, you can easily automate the work by attaching the product to a testing suite through a dedicated API.

The cloud solution will then be able to handle the monotonous testing tasks, where your team will be able to spend valuable energy and time on other development works. The teams will be automating the processes, which will rapidly push the code updates to the cloud. It will incorporate the automated testing procedures within CI/CD pipeline, which will ensure performance, device QA and regression checks when needed, before & after the updates are made to the staging or production environments.

Challenges in Cloud-Based Automation Testing

Some of the challenges that professionals face while approaching cloud-based automation testing are:

1. Complexity of Creating the Test Environment

One of the most crucial challenges cloud testers face is building the test environment. The test environment should consist of all the important app configurations or test data. Creating the test ecosystem and managing the same is a very time-consuming and critical process, resulting in a big challenge.

2. Privacy and Security Challenges

The cloud providers offer data backup, recovery, and other security options. But even then, there’s some risk of security breaches. When you are conducting the security testing process manually, the testers have the possibility of missing out on some bugs. Therefore, human-prone errors are still a challenge, even with cloud testing approaches.

3. Integration Testing Problems

When the experts initiate integration testing over the cloud infrastructure, it is performed across multiple components such as systems, devices, databases, servers, and networks. As the testers have no optimal control over the cloud testing environment, there’s a chance that the database might crash or the server might experience downtime. Therefore, it becomes an evident challenge for the testers to count on.

4. Performance Challenges

When the cloud service providers offer you a low network bandwidth, it will hamper the overall delivery and testing of applications within the cloud. Low performance of the cloud apps will drop the customers’ experience and business productivity at a rapid scale.

Ways to Solve Challenges of Cloud-Based Automation Testing

Here are some ways that you can adopt in pursuit of overcoming the challenges of cloud-based automation testing:

• When creating a test environment, you can use the cloud-based management tools for the test environments and pick frameworks, such as Plutora or Testim.io, to ease the complexity.
• To ensure testing diverse components is made easy with cloud-based automation testing services, you can preferably use the tools which include Blaze Meter, LoadStorm, Test Cloud, and others.
• The compliance challenges can also be overcome by developing a comprehensive cloud testing strategy for ensuring the right standards like HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, and others.
• Use performance testing tools to ensure the application operates well under all bandwidths.
• The QA experts should get along with using some of the dedicated security testing tools, such as Acunetix, Nmap, Metasploit, and others, to ensure vulnerabilities are taken care of.

Conclusion

Cloud solutions are now important in the business world, and ensuring end-to-end testing for dedicated apps is to help them leverage the benefits of cloud computing. But, there are certain testing challenges within a cloud environment, which should be addressed and handled carefully.

The QA experts should be able to leverage the potential of automated cloud testing and also run independent testing services to ensure the apps are high-performing, scalable, secure, and fully functional. It is a powerful initiative that has helped businesses boom in this technology-centric era.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mit Thakkar, Marketing Head at KiwiQA, drives the growth of the testing industry by leveraging his expertise to devise innovative marketing strategies for global businesses. He is dedicated to helping the testing industry thrive through his extensive experience and expertise.