Published on the 25/09/2014 | Written by Beverley Head
Cloud computing has boosted the ability of organisations to test their systems for extreme loads in order to guard against embarrassing and potentially costly crashes…
Jeff Findlay, Borland architect for MicroFocus in Asia Pacific, says that while load and performance testing has been around for many years – it has traditionally been the province of large financial institutions which could not afford their systems to crash under user loads. However the advent of often rich consumer facing websites meant that the need for extreme load testing was on the rise, he said.
“With the advent of social media and the fact that users have taken control of how they interact with business there has been a complete shift in what performance testing means,” he said.
Findlay said that the advent of technology-literate consumers with access to a wide range of devices such as tablets, computers, and smartphones meant consumers were used to instant responses from social media such as Facebook or Twitter, and as a result this was what they expected from all the companies they interacted with online.
“Customers don’t have a written SLA – they have an expectation which is measured against the experience they have with other media.” Findlay cited a study by Equation Research which found that if a net user was forced to wait five seconds for a web page to load 74 percent would abandon it.
Findlay said that organisations needed to take a fresh look at load testing, across multiple devices, using multiple browsers to access a web site, because; “Industry no longer dictates how people interact with that company.”
While virtualisation had already allowed companies to step up their load testing by creating thousands, even tens of thousands of test users, a step change in demand meant companies needed to test the resilience of their systems for hundreds of thousands of users using a broad slew of different access mechanisms.
“Providing the infrastructure for all of those devices and virtual users in your own enterprise becomes a costly venture,” and also was not a true test of what an externally connected end user might experience, he noted.
Findlay said that load and performance testing conducted in cloud environments gave a much more accurate picture of what consumers might experience, and allowed companies to orchestrate tests that simulated perhaps 50,000 users in APAC, 20,000 in Asia and 10,000 in China and also mimic their experience connecting via 4G, 3G or 2G networks.
“This can only be done effectively and affordably if you have those virtual users in the cloud,” he said.
Most enterprises he said would benefit from planning their load testing in association with marketing departments, allowing sites to be tested and bugs identified and ironed out, well in advance of a marketing push.
