Testing Strategy for Successful Cloud Migration

Introduction

Every journey begins with a single step. However, it is crucial for businesses to take the first step in the right direction. While you may be eager to begin your cloud journey and have the momentum to proceed, it’s essential to pause and consider whether you have a testing strategy to ensure a successful cloud migration.

Why Is Cloud Migration Testing Important?

The answer is simple: Migrating applications to the cloud presents challenges and involves uncharted territory. Implementing a formalized framework tailored to your unique needs can streamline the process and minimize disruption. Simply put, the right testing strategy can assess application performance before and after migration, preventing surprises and safeguarding your enterprise. Ultimately, cloud migration testing aims to identify and prevent potential issues related to scalability, databases, integration, and other components that may cause significant breakdowns and harm your company’s reputation.

To ensure a smooth cloud migration testing process, it is important to implement the right testing strategy with the assistance of experienced testing experts. This critical process should include thorough testing of functional, integration, security, and performance parameters, application start and response times, performance during peak demand and off-hours, and usability on various platforms and devices, such as desktops, remote connections, mobile phones, and tablets. The metrics obtained from these tests help identify, quantify, and address any issues that arise during cloud migration.

Test Strategy for a Successful Cloud Migration

The blueprint for a successful cloud migration test strategy comprises the above-mentioned tests and their metrics. Let’s take a closer look at them.

Functional Testing: This test is used to confirm that every build meets the requirements for component and service functionality, before and after the cloud migration.

Integration Testing: This testing is critical to verify that all connected services and apps can seamlessly share data across the cloud and on-premises.

Security Testing: Security Testing is a must to prevent security-related downtimes, leakage, and monetary loss.

Performance Testing: It measures an application’s ability to handle data volumes, capacity loads, and CPU and memory usage.

Besides the tests mentioned above, there are other aspects to consider. Applications with dedicated portals or those requiring interface changes to run on mobile devices should be tested on both Android and iOS platforms. Realistically, testing every possible device is not feasible, so it is best to identify the majority of the representative user base on mobile platforms. Tests should be conducted on both cellular and Wi-Fi networks since different speeds can impact application performance. It is also essential to test printing from a cloud-based application to a local printer, which often encounters security and network challenges.

Therefore, implementing the right testing strategy with the right testing experts is crucial to ease the cloud migration testing process and ensure your business makes the most out of the cloud’s capabilities while avoiding costly pitfalls.

Benefits of Cloud Migration Testing

The benefits of cloud migration testing are numerous and can greatly improve the efficiency of digital transformation for enterprises. Implementing the right testing process can greatly save time, money, and resources.

Some of the key benefits of cloud migration testing include:

• Cloud migration testing tools allow enterprises to eliminate delays associated with environment set-up and reduce the need to share environments among teams.
• The total cost of ownership for cloud-based testing tools is significantly lower than for traditional testing tools. With many cloud migration testing tools available in a pay-as-you-go model, it saves costs when the testing tools are not required or not in use.
• With the right cloud migration testing tools, diverse teams and team members can have complete control over operations in real-time, around the clock.
• Cloud application testing tools are available 24/7 for all team members and QA teams spread globally, allowing performance testing to be conducted anytime. This can lead to faster time-to-market.
• Most cloud application testing tools are flexible and can easily integrate with legacy applications to address critical bugs in real-time. Integrating cloud testing tools with third-party tools makes bug tracking, project management, and test prioritization simpler and more efficient.
• Cloud-based testing tools scale with your business without any downtimes, ensuring high availability and supporting your scalability on demand.
• Cloud providers such as Hexaware can offer the most advanced tools, including those for test automation, for enhanced security and performance. This gives businesses the power to unleash innovation and drive growth.

How Hexaware’s Cloud Quality Assurance Can Help

Quality assurance and testing are pivotal for successful cloud migration, and at Hexaware, we understand the importance of ensuring everything runs seamlessly, and end-users don’t notice any disruptions. While many technology providers offer testing strategies for cloud migration, not all provide the same level of assurance. Some challenges in developing the right testing strategy can include the expense of migrating large volumes of data and live applications and ensuring adequate security.

At Hexaware, we conduct an extensive study of every aspect of your IT system using our Cloud Quality Assurance framework. This framework incorporates the right type of testing for each strategy, leverages open-source solutions and avoids redundant testing costs while providing in-house resiliency testing for microservices. With this approach, we ensure that all data and systems are migrated to the cloud with zero or minimal downtime.

To learn more about how Hexaware can help you execute a successful testing strategy for cloud migration, please visit: https://hexaware.com/services/digital-assurance/cloud-quality-assurance/