This article was authored by Melissa Jacobson and was originally published on Orasi’s “Eye on Quality” blog.
In late August, voke, Inc. debuted its “Market Snapshot Report: Virtual and Cloud-Based Labs,” about how companies of all sizes and levels of testing sophistication view, use and benefit from virtual and cloud-based development and testing technologies. The results were pretty amazing―even we were surprised!
Among the many benefits the 503 participant companies (50% of which were U.S. based) cited, 53% saw reduced CAPEX (capital expenditures) from the use of virtual and cloud-based labs. Thirty-nine percent said they help eliminate defects prior to production, and 33% said they improve audits and compliance. Of course, the biggest benefit (58%) was on-demand access to environments, which we see as a primary reason why many organizations adopt virtual and/or cloud-based testing, either alone or in combination with on-premise, physical testing.
Beyond the benefits of virtual and cloud-based labs, things became even more interesting. It is evident from this survey that teams working in traditional development and testing environments are really struggling to maintain an efficient, productive workflow.
Among those surveyed, 68% of participants said they experience QA delays while waiting for an environment to begin testing, start a new test cycle, test a required platform or verify a defect. On average, across the board, respondents require 10 separate environments to complete development and testing, with 50% of them unavailable when they need them.
Furthermore, the time that software projects are held up, waiting for environments, is dismal. Among respondents, 46% report they wait three days or more (with some waiting up to a year) for their environments.
In organizations that are not utilizing virtual or cloud-based labs, development and QA teams wait, on average, 18 days to receive access to the environments they need and then spend an average of 12-14 days configuring them.
ROI Proves the Point
When the survey dug into the comparative benefits of using physical, on-premise environments versus those that are virtual or cloud-based, the results were equally dramatic, especially in the area of environment provisioning. Without access to virtual and cloud-based environments, 27% of companies wait one to three months for provisioning. After gaining access to virtual and/or cloud-based labs, 60% wait two hours or less―with 25% waiting fewer than 15 minutes.
In other areas, the gains are equally impressive. With virtual or cloud-based labs, 63% of participants reduce defect reproduction time by 50% or greater, and 65% experience a drop in production defects of between 30% and 60%. The ROI statistics cited by this study go on and on―but we encourage you to download the report and read about them, yourself.
As a company that staunchly promotes a variety of testing lifecycle acceleration technologies―from test automation and service virtualization to cloud-based testing and virtual device emulation―we’ll admit that we are biased. However, the results of this survey are not. These statistics illuminate the significant development and testing productivity drains that enterprises suffer when they do not leverage the power of virtual and cloud-based environments.
Earlier this year, Orasi strengthened its partnership with cloud-environment provider Skytap, which has powered Orasi’s CloudPerform product since 2012. To learn more about how companies are leveraging cloud-based testing to increase environment availability, foster collaboration and facilitate environment sharing among disparate team members, we invite you to view the joint Orasi/Skytap webinar, “Automate Your Environment Provisioning for Mobile App Development.” For more information about our offerings, visit Orasi’s Skytap product page.
