by Rajesh Bashyam – VP Client Services
The era of maintaining large climate controlled spaces with miles of racks holding expensive yet quickly aging hardware is so nineties. So is the idea of large in-house IT teams to support and maintain those systems.  With the emergence of Cloud computing, businesses are freed from the overhead of IT maintenance, while gaining scalability, and easy access.  No surprise that adoption of the cloud is reaching ubiquity in 2014, with 94% of surveyed organizations hosting applications in the cloud, and 87% using public cloud.
This article provides a holistic view of the cloud, with a real-world example of how to utilize the cloud to your advantage: cloud testing. Follow our blog for more examples of how to launch your business in the cloud.
How Do You Leverage Cloud?
- Use cloud-based systems for data storage and sharing. Â Not too long ago, you would have backed up your files to a network server, not Box.com.
- Use cloud-based software products instead of installing the software on premises. Â Classic examples is Salesforce.com (a cloud company before there was a cloud) which replaced many companies’ installations of sales force automation software (and now provide many other products beyond that). Â Email and productivity software are probably the most prevalent now.
- Move your own company’s products to a cloud hosting environment. Â Both customer facing and internal back office applications can be moved off premises, as can the development and testing environments that support them.
Why Use Cloud?
The reasons for using cloud will vary depending on how you intend to use it, but here are some of the top reasons:
- Access Freedom– Employees, clients, end customers all can access the applications remotely in the office and on the go, from any device of their choice.
- Flexible & Scalable – Choose the configuration, mix and match software, and run the business applications within minutes and derive metrics to select the one that suits your needs best.
- Cost Reduction – Highly efficient use of resources to shadow the capacity eliminates the exorbitant cost of in-house hardware and subsequent administration. With cloud you pay only for what you use.
- Automatic Updates – Maintenance free to a large extent the provider takes the responsibility of updating and upgrading the software.
Cloud Testing: a Real World Example of Using Cloud to Your Advantage
Our client presented us with a challenge: Data from 200 plus multi-crystalline furnaces needs to be collected every 30 seconds, analyzed and dynamically reported at periodic intervals. Physically setting up hundreds of simulating machines would be a fool’s errand, so the solution required some creativity.
The team came up with this cloud-based solution:
- Created a cloud solution simulating the data generation closely shadowing real time furnaces
- Cloned multiple instances of the simulators on the cloud as required for testing
- Collected metrics from the multiple cloud instances using 1 Master Controller which also resided in the cloud
- Executed the analysis and reporting based on data received
For test automation, an instance on the cloud was spawned with Test Complete as the preferred testing software:
- Scripts were executed against the 200 plus furnace simulators for test data generation
- Master Controller functions were also tested remotely
- Update the automated scripts on the Test server on the cloud with versions updated as needed
Result
The cost reduction was significant and the testing simulation was close to a real-time implementation of a large industry.
Cloud Computing with Dextrys
Dextrys is a US-based software outsourcing company that provides solutions using cloud computing to clients worldwide. Our expertise in solving complex business problems such as distributed Agile development in the cloud, large deployment and testing via simulating real time environments have significantly reduced costs and time for our clients.
Click here to find out more about Dextrys cloud services.
