It doesn’t seem too long ago that in IT “The Cloud” was a new industry buzzword, a future technology. Now it’s all but ubiquitous.

We carry cloud synchronisation devices in our pockets, so when we snap a hipster-blue filtered photo of our meal in an obscure basement bar, shutter.mp4 has barely finished playing before our smartphone is establishing an HTTPS connection to a cloud-based backup service to ensure it’s stored in perpetuity.

And our reliance on cloud technologies is only going to get bigger. Cisco’s Global Cloud Index shows large projected increases in cloud usage in the coming years with approximately two thirds of all workloads forecast to be processed in the cloud by 2017.

In 2013 IBM purchased the cloud-focussed company SoftLayer Technologies while also committing to adding 15 new data centres, and locally, IDC Australia sees cloud and mobility underpinning all continued ICT expenditure, with revenues predicted to exceed $2.3 billion by 2016; the trend speaks for itself.

Ramifications for Users

Whether internally built or third-party hosted, as software and infrastructure as a service (SaaS & IaaS) solutions gain ever more ground, the performance of these services becomes ever more critical. For end users, the downstream impact is unavoidable.

With cloud-based services becoming more prevalent, productivity in the workplace will rely heavily on the performance, reliability, and availability of these services. The choice of which to use will therefore not only rely on how well it meets the functional demands of its users, but also how well it performs while doing so.

It also means that IaaS and SaaS can offer much cheaper solutions than traditional licensing models. No demand for, or usage of, a service, means no money down, minimising complex ROI calculations necessary for the purchase of dedicated hardware and software licenses.

Testing in the Cloud

We’re already seeing the impact of cloud in technical testing streams. Clients are increasingly choosing or preferring SaaS models over traditional ownership/maintenance licensing models when engaging Planit’s performance testing services.

To meet this growing demand, on March 12 at the TestWest testing conference in Perth, Planit officially unveiled its cloud based performance testing solution.

The Planit Cloud allows testing to start sooner. It’s possible to spin up performance testing infrastructure within minutes, ready to generate load against a system or application. It’s also an all-in-one, on-demand solution. That means we provide the tools, infrastructure, and consulting services, scaled to meet your requirements.

The scalable nature of the Planit Cloud means we can assist you with load simulated from locations around the world, and whether you require a fully hosted solution, or you simply need to supplement your existing testing solution, our offering is compatible with industry standard tools such as HP LoadRunner, Apache JMeter, and Borland Silk Performer.

This approach also means you pay for what you need; no more hedging bets by overestimating license costs “just in case”. In the simplest terms, if you don’t use it, you don’t pay for it.

Analyse This

In our own annual industry analysis – the Planit Testing Index – the local market demonstrated a 2% increase in the uptake of SaaS tools in 2013, to 12%.

While this rise seems modest, many respondents also indicated an intention to switch to cloud-based services in 2014; a change which if fully realised would mean a significant increase in the uptake of SaaS, to as much as 35% this year.

Realistically, and based on previous intention vs. action statistics from the Index, the realised value of this transition may be closer to 20%, come mid-2014. But regardless of whether this year sees an increase of 8% or 23%, there are clear indicators of continued market growth in this area, and in anticipation, Planit now hosts a site dedicated to its cloud solution, which defines the approach and implementation of these services.

If you wish to talk to us further about how we can assist your performance testing practice, drop us an email.

Cricket Australia Case Study

While the official launch of the Planit Cloud is recent, we’ve been utilising cloud-based performance testing services on both large and small scale projects for a number of our clients already. This includes successful utilisation of our cloud solution to test Cricket Australia’s mobile app and the Big Bash website to 10,000 users. Read on for the Cricket Australia case study.

Sources

Cisco ; IBM ; IDC-1; IDC-2 ; Planit Testing Index