HP Speeds Clients’ Cloud Evolution

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2.    Is mobile testing emerging as a genre? If so, some info on kind of apps for which Cloud-based testing would be apt. 

Mobile applications are set to grow exponentially with technology advances in smart phone and table devices. Mobile application testing across a myriad of devices means that compatibility testing and security testing becomes vital. We see many instances of security breaches that occur through applications running on mobile devices.

The cloud has a role to play in mobile application testing, with HP partner solutions like Perfecto Mobile offering a very large range of devices that are accessible through the cloud. As such, applications that are developed for mobile devices can now be tested on 100’s of different devices. Perfecto makes the devices available through the cloud and through software tools that integrate with HP Quality Center that allows application test cases to be applied to multiple devices to see how an application functions on each device.

So for us to have a secure, seamless, context aware environment where the productivity of the business user is improved – the need for mobile testing as a genre has already emerged. We see a couple of trends around this – one for the personal usage market, where the apps in the app-store need to be tested to ensure they can work across different generations of mobile OS and various form-factors of the handheld and pads; the second one is in the enterprise segment – e.g. where the salesman on the go can have instant ability to reach out to his corporate data and close the opportunity using his handheld. Finally, we are already seeing thinking on how do you enable a person to have their device of choice and yet be able to handle both the personal needs and the enterprise work from the same device in a secure protected way.

3.    How can weak points in the software be better addressed in the Cloud environment?

There are two key areas where the Cloud can address weak points in software applications. 1) Minimize Configuration Errors and 2) Run Meaningful Performance Load Tests.

Minimize Configuration Errors – The cloud can deliver a development, test and production environment that is an exact replica or image in each environment. Traditionally, with physical infrastructure the development environment is the smallest environment running the latest version of middleware software, the test environment is usually larger but not at the same scale as production and also may not contain the identical software versions to development, and then production is the largest environment and may have software that is slightly older versions. This creates the potential for a configuration error that does not occur in development, but does occur in test or production. The cloud delivers an identical image for development, test and production which virtually eliminates configuration errors in each environment.

Run Meaningful Performance Load Tests

The test environment is traditionally a smaller environment than production, so the results of a performance load test need to be extrapolated out to determine performance failure points in production. Systems do not necessarily scale linearly, so this approach is often flawed. Using cloud, we can ensure that the test environment is identical to the production environment, so any performance load test run in test provides very meaningful results for the production environment without having to extrapolate.

4.    What is the impact of security, privacy, performance and reliability concerns?

 The fundamentals of today’s business applications are Functional Quality, Performance and Security. We must ensure all three in order to deliver a positive customer experience. Cloud and mobility raise concerns for clients regarding security and performance. The very nature of the cloud is a shared services model, so the ability to compartmentalize the cloud and secure one clients access and data from another is of the utmost importance. Security in mobile applications is also a concern with recent breaches occurring on applications that run on mobile devices.

The primary benefit of the cloud is access to scalable infrastructure that can support the growing performance needs of a business and its applications. In theory, the cloud gives you access to instantaneous capacity and scale to handle very large transaction volumes. HP delivers some of the industry market leading software tools for performance with HP LoadRunner and security with HP Fortify, WebInspect and ArcSight. HP has utilized these tools and our expertise to establish a service called Cloud Assure which monitors performance, security and availability of applications running in the cloud, assisting clients to diagnose problems between a client application and a cloud service provider and help alleviate their security, privacy, performance and reliability concerns.

 5.    Can you put some light on Interoperability with other products (hardware and software)?

There are two aspects to it – first, interoperability will become more and more a need with the mobility solutions; as employees of corporations would like to choose their own devices and the corporate needs to keep pace with that (to minimize the employee having multiple devices); and yet ensure a secure, seamless service; second, we will see the evolution of open standards – which as service providers and application providers start to implement and evolve – will reduce the need for significant interoperability testing.

6.    In the event of a problem, how good are the diagnostics in the Cloud?

HP recognizes the need for good diagnostics solutions within the cloud. HP established a service called Cloud Assure that leverages HP tools and expertise to monitor applications running in the cloud from a performance, security and availability perspective. It is important to be able to determine if a problem exist in the application or the cloud infrastructure when diagnosing a problem and taking corrective action. There are good diagnostic tools from HP Performance Center, HP Application Security Center and HP Business Availability Center that can help understand and diagnose the root cause of problems with applications running in the cloud.