Cloud Testing - TaaS, testing as a service

Forrester says that by 2011, CIOs Must Answer the Question, "Why Not Run In The Cloud?"                  

Cloud computing is in its early childhood, and hence testing service providers like AppLabs, other cloud computing service providers and cloud customers, have the luxury of designing a measured approach to discover its benefits and gradually reap the benefits of cloud. The caution we need to apply is that both technology and competition mostly have scant respect for the Gregorian calendar.

Though too early to be christened a success story of testing applications that run in the cloud, or testing from the cloud, instances of very positive client responses to Testing Services for Cloud are on the rise. Primarily because companies seek to reduce costs, speed time to benefit and improve quality of the applications they move into production.

Companies with high defect rates and difficulty in responding quickly to provision test environments will look at cloud testing option predicts Gartner.  As you would be aware, the three major categories of cloud computing are software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a service (PaaS), and IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a service).  Now the industry is fast seeing the evolution of a fourth category - TaaS, testing as a service in the cloud. While most industry pundits treat cloud testing as a subset of cloud computing they do acknowledge an independent existence for cloud testing.  

Application security testing is based on technological and economical principles that make it suitable for cloud and/or service delivery and Gartner predicts that by 2013, at least 20% of enterprises will use cloud services for security testing of their on-premises applications.

Cloud skeptics think of cloud computing and cloud testing as a fad or industry hype. Even if they are right (which a majority of analysts and industry pundits think is not true), the key question in that case is what will be left when the fad or hype runs its course? And that will depend on what we accomplish in the meantime!