This article will share key highlights about
• Microservices Architecture
• Performance Testing benefits
• Tools Used for Performance Analysis
• Google Cloud Offerings with Best Practices
• Overcoming a few challenges during adoption and Indium success stories

Microservices Architecture and Performance Testing Benefits

Microservice architecture refers to a method of software development in which a large software application is decomposed into several independently deployable services. Each service represents a specific business feature or domain that can be developed, deployed, and scaled independently. The mode of communication will be through well-defined APIs that make use of transport protocols such as HTTP or messaging queue systems.

By breaking down a monolithic application into smaller, specialised services, microservice architecture offers several benefits:

• Scalability: Microservices allow individual services to be scaled independently based on their specific resource requirements. This scalability enables applications to handle varying workloads and accommodate increased traffic and user demands.
• Flexibility and Agility: Microservices facilitate rapid development and deployment by enabling teams to work independently on different services. Each service can be developed, tested, and deployed separately, allowing for faster iteration and continuous delivery of new features and updates.
• Fault Isolation: In a monolithic application, a single bug or issue can impact the entire system. A microservices architecture isolates services from each other, minimising the impact of failures.
• Technology Diversity: Microservices allow for the use of different technologies and programming languages for different services. This flexibility allows teams to choose the most suitable tools and technologies for each service, depending on their specific requirements and expertise.

Performance testing plays a critical role in ensuring the effectiveness and reliability of microservice architecture. Here’s why performance testing is essential in this context:

A Glimpse at Performance Testing Tools for Micro Services

Some of the popular Load Testing tools are mentioned below.

• Apache JMeter
• Locust
• Gatling
• ReadyAPI
• Postman (a recent release has included Load testing features)

Some of the popular Monitoring tools are mentioned below.

• AppDynamics APM Tool
• Dynatrace APM Tool
• New Relic APM Tool
• Nagios, ELK Stack, and Grafana (Open-Sourced)

Indium has well-trained specialists and core expertise in using the above tools. Please refer to this link to learn more about Indium’s Offerings for Performance Testing and engineering.

Core Google Cloud Services for Micro Services Performance Testing

Best Practices for Adopting Google Cloud for Microservices

Challenges and Mitigation during the Google Cloud adoption process

During the adoption process of Google Cloud’s microservices architecture, organizations may encounter specific challenges. Here are a few common challenges and ways they can be overcome:

1. Migration Complexity:

Migrating existing monolithic applications to a microservices architecture on Google Cloud can be complex. It involves breaking down the monolith into smaller services and redesigning the application architecture. This process requires careful planning and coordination.

Overcoming the Challenge:

• Conduct a thorough analysis of the existing application to identify service boundaries and dependencies.
• Utilize tools and frameworks like Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Istio for managing and orchestrating microservices.
• Gradually migrate services to the microservices architecture, starting with less critical components, and incrementally move towards a fully distributed system.
• Employ testing methodologies, such as canary deployments and A/B testing, to ensure a smooth transition and minimize disruptions.

2. Operational Complexity:

Operating and managing a microservices architecture can be challenging, especially when dealing with multiple services, deployments, and dependencies. Ensuring high availability, monitoring, and fault tolerance across the distributed system requires robust operational practices.

Overcoming the Challenge:

• Leverage Google Cloud’s managed services, such as GKE, to simplify the management of microservices infrastructure.
• Implement observability practices using tools like Cloud Monitoring and Logging to gain visibility into the performance and health of microservices.
• Employ automated deployment and scaling mechanisms, such as Kubernetes Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) and Google Cloud’s Load Balancing, to handle fluctuating workloads.
• Establish robust incident management and alerting processes to address issues promptly and minimize downtime.

3. Data Management and Consistency:

Microservices architecture often involves distributed data management, which introduces challenges in maintaining data consistency, synchronisation, and managing transactions across services.

Overcoming the Challenge:

• Utilise appropriate data storage solutions provided by Google Cloud, such as Cloud Firestore, Cloud Spanner, or Cloud Bigtable, depending on the specific requirements of each microservice.
• Implement event-driven architectures and message queues, such as Cloud Pub/Sub, for asynchronous communication and eventual consistency between services.
• Employ data replication and synchronisation techniques, such as Change Data Capture (CDC), to ensure data integrity and consistency across services.
• Implements transactional patterns like the Saga Pattern or two-phase commits when strong consistency is required across multiple microservices.

4. Security and Access Control:

Securing microservices and managing access control across the distributed system can be challenging due to the increased complexity of the architecture and the need to protect sensitive data and communication channels.

Overcoming the Challenge:

• Employ Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM) to manage access control and permissions for different microservices.
• Implement secure communication channels using encryption protocols like SSL or TLS.
• Utilise Google Cloud’s security services, such as Cloud Security Command Centre and Cloud Armour, to monitor and protect against security threats.
• Implement security best practises like input validation, secure coding practises, and regular vulnerability assessments to mitigate risks.

Indium also has a detailed cloud adoption framework that can be used by small and large firms. The Cloud Maturity Assessment model helps us determine where we are in our cloud journey and what strategies to undertake moving forward. Kindly refer to the link to learn more about it.

Success Stories

For testing the performance of microservices, many organisations have used Google Cloud. Here are a few examples of how Indium has successfully adopted Google Cloud services, which have made “Happy Customers“.

Conclusion

In summary, performance testing is crucial in a microservices architecture to validate scalability, assess service interactions, evaluate load balancing strategies, ensure resilience and failure handling, and optimise resource utilisation. It helps identify performance bottlenecks, improve system reliability, and deliver a smooth and responsive user experience in complex, distributed environments.

The post Microservices Performance Testing using Google Cloud appeared first on Indium.

Azure DevOps is a modern-day tool used for version control and trouble-free team management. An individual can manage his entire team with a minimum of a browser as a requirement. The team can easily be part of different countries and manage their activities without any delay. The development team can be in one country, and the testing team can be working in another country. Even If the management has trust issues, the Azure Audit does an audit of each activity that the team is doing, and the management must only worry about cross-country chatting and financial management.

The following types of testing are mission-critical for ensuring the success and reliability of your software:

1. Unit Testing with Azure DevOps
2. Integration Testing with Azure DevOps
3. System Testing with Azure DevOps
4. Functional Testing with Azure DevOps
5. Acceptance Testing with Azure DevOps
6. Smoke Testing with Azure DevOps
7. Regression Testing with Azure DevOps
8. Performance Testing with Azure DevOps
9. Security Testing with Azure DevOps
10. User Acceptance Testing with Azure DevOps

1. Unit Testing with Azure DevOps

Unit testing is breaking the code into its parts and testing each separate code one by one. This testing technique should never be confused with any other testing technique. This is because unit testing is like laying a brick. Brick by brick, the developer will lay code and test each code unit; this is what unit testing is all about. Azure DevOps creates version-controlled parts of the project; they can be assigned, and the automation tests can be tested using a version-controlled build. It also provides the user with the ability to have a view based on recent pipeline activities and control access to various stakeholders.

Fig 1. Pipelines in Azure DevOps

2. Integration Testing with Azure DevOps

Integration testing establishes testing techniques for when the individual bricks of code are laid together to test the data movement and failure points when separate developers merge their code together. Since each developer is separate, they can make fatal flaws in how the code blends together. Terraform is a recommended tool from the Azure team for such chaotic activity. The tool allows the user to create their own customised configuration files and allows the developer or tester to test the ability of their code to work with these config files, along with an additional static code analysis feature. For more information regarding Terraform, visit their website, Terraform by HashiCorp. Another cool thing about Terraform is that it is Datadog-ready.

Fig 2. Integration Testing flow using Terraform

3. System Testing with Azure DevOps

System testing tests all the modules together and is closely related to integration testing in the sense that all modules are integrated together to do a full system QA. Azure DevOps allows integration with various service providers. The workings of this are already mentioned in integration testing. Another nuance of system testing is that the testers may not have the necessary understanding of how the code works. It is divided into functional and non-functional testing.

Also Read: Testing Assistive Technologies in a Product

4. Functional Testing with Azure DevOps

Testers like to fondly call functional testing feature testing because it’s exactly that. The tester tests all the features of the individual module and sees that the features that you intended to have in the software are there in the product. A few years of experience will tell you that Azure DevOps is a lifesaver in terms of linking manual test cases with bugs, PBIs, and feature requests. The Azure DevOps and its rich UI provide a very good mapping of individual features of the product, which allows newbies to join the team to understand the pros and cons of the product within a 60-day period for the development or testing team. Some of these details can be used again by automation to conduct regression testing.

5. Acceptance Testing with Azure DevOps

Code must be accepted in the context of business, user requirements, regulation, the vision of the developers, and feedback from the testers. Just like the Azure DevOps functional test. Azure DevOps is good at keeping track of users’ use cases, scenarios, and even edge cases. Every idea from every individual on the team can be tracked and used at any phase of the project to get a customer-centric product. Standardised tests in the context of regulations that will be applied to the product can also be added to plans in Azure DevOps when they need to be conducted.

6. Smoke Testing with Azure DevOps

This is simply to check or test whether the build is stable enough or worthy enough to do a sanity or regression test. The plan will mostly come from years of experience from previous releases or simply from a list of critical functionalities that should be working, based on the consensus made by the management on what should be working.

7. Regression Testing

Smoke tests and sanity lead to regression with regular intervals to submit a bug. The entire code is under scrutiny. Azure DevOps can help in creating manual tests in a flash based on queries from in-sprint QA and years of experience in testing the product. Azure DevOps helps in creating the test plan and managing it at the time of execution with the help of filters and neat charts that provide feedback to management and the tester about their progress. What shift managers fail to manage in factories, Azure DevOps does in a flash: employee engagement when the work is in progress.

8. Performance Testing

Performance testing is a test to know whether software performs at scale, on a good foundation for speed, and to remove bottlenecks whenever developers and testers identify bottlenecks. The example provided below is based on a tool of preference based on popularity. Ex: JMeter and test engines connected to the virtual machine and various other tools and app services to conduct performance testing using a dashboard from Azure DevOps Performance testing is simple with Azure DevOps.

Fig 3. Load testing flow in Azure DevOps

9. Security Testing

Test the HTML and JavaScript code; for other cases, it’s different, for vulnerability to threats, security loopholes, risks, and emulating an actual hack or attack. Pen testing is one example of security testing. Security testing involves adding common CVE-identifying tools to a Kali Linux machine, adding them to Azure DevOps using Azure agents, running security tests, and providing feedback using Azure charts using data available to Azure DevOps.

10. User Acceptance Testing

Code must be accepted in the context of business and user requirements, as well as based on regulations, by the end users. Support engineers love it because it integrates well with the sales force. Continuous cooperation among support engineers, in-sprint engineers, and regression of manual and automation can constantly happen. They can quickly interact with urgent changes and ensure that the code is stable after testing.

Conclusion

Based on the above description, Azure DevOps is a tool that allows a wide range of integration with tools of maximum importance in the development and testing of a new product. Along with it, it has control over the process of development and testing with neat features like version control based on Git and Team Foundation. Everything is audited. The dev team, management, and product owners can all be in sync with the latest features and details. Since Microsoft owns almost everything related to IDEs, Git, and cloud infrastructure, it is going to be the future of everything in development, at least for the foreseeable future.

The post Empowering Testing Excellence: Exploring the Synergy between Azure DevOps and Diverse Testing Techniques appeared first on Indium.

In 2017, 8.4 billion IoT devices were in use, a 31% increase from 2016. Gartner also anticipated that there would be 20 billion devices by the year 2020. Despite the pandemic having derailed this prediction temporarily, the IoT momentum is steadily gaining speed. 

Organizations seek to integrate IoT devices into their network infrastructures and explore new ways to utilize and manage the collected data. IDC forecasts that the amount of data created by IoT devices will reach 79.4 ZB (zettabytes) by 2025. According to Mordor Intelligence, the IoT technology market value is expected to rise to $1.39 trillion by 2026. Along with AI, connectivity (5G, LPWAN, Wi-Fi 6, etc.), EDGE computing, and wearables (smartwatches, wristbands, etc.), IoT is only set to soar ahead.

Due to their ability to connect to a broader network, IoT-enabled devices can achieve a high level of functionality. Nevertheless, this introduces a new difficulty: ensuring that devices perform as expected.

You might be interested to read on IoT Testing Approach in Devices

IoT use cases in different industries

Indium is pleased to have IoT as part of its digital assurance portfolio, along with our capabilities around IoT performance engineering. Let’s quickly touch upon how IoT is effectively implemented in different domains:

Healthcare: Wearables, defibrillators, oxygen pumps, connected inhalers, ingestible sensors, IoT in hospital management, monitoring patients remotely, monitoring glucose, heart rate, depression, Parkinson’s disease, etc.

Retail: Facility management, buyer behavior, supply chain, cold chain monitoring, personalized shopping, smart shelves, etc.

Manufacturing & Logistics:Real-time machine monitoring, predictive maintenance, production visibility, integrating systems, compiling, asset utilization, communications systems, vehicle tracking, location and route management, inventory tracking, etc.

BFSI:Real-time monitoring, fraud detection, improved analytics, better customer experience, cardless transactions, etc.

Travel /Automobile: Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), blind-spot monitoring, lane departure warnings, parking assistance, object recognition, real-time line visibility, metal inspection, quality control, vehicle health check and inspection, etc.

Education & Media:Connected TVs & devices, facility monitoring and maintenance, data from other facilities, student-instructor response, performance and behavior, etc.

Energy:Optimizing energy spending, predictive analysis, smart grid systems, etc.

Also Read: IoT Testing Challenges & Approach for most of the cases

Focus areas of IoT performance testing

Clearly, IoT is making its presence across all verticals. However, the approach to IoT performance testing solutions is not as straightforward as web or API performance testing. Some of the focus areas of IoT performance testing can be segregated as follows:

IoT Platform

– Concurrent EDGE devices

– Bulk volume of message flow

– Batch performance

Business users

– E2E time for servers

– E2E time for users

– End-user applications

Messages from IoT devices (which can also be activated by emulators) are delivered to the Gateway using underlying protocols such as Zigbee, CoAP, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc. Emulators are not always possible, and depending on the technology available, we may need to build some code to push bulk data.

Performance testing in action

IoT communication routes include HTTP/S, XMPP, TCP/IP, UDC, and others. The performance testing technique will span multiple layers, such as

Device layer 

• The key objective is to provide an end-to-end user experience and track event processing and malfunction, scalability of bidirectional devices, the energy usage of batteries, and so on. We can also conduct device profiling, API, and e2e performance testing.

Connectivity layer

• We can measure multi-geo performance, gateway scalability, network latency, and performance. We can also do batch performance tests, real-time analytics performance tests, and DB performance tests.

Data layer

• Includes event validation, data retrieval, batch performance, and predictive analytics.

End-user touchpoints

• Tests the end-user experience across the web and mobile, as well as scalability and reliability.

When it comes to tools, we can use any commercial or leading tools depending upon the technology stack. Typically, MQTT and web protocols are used. Tools like JMeter, LoadRunner, Neoload, etc., can be leveraged. The tool will be finalized depending on the IoT performance testing strategy. 

Fulfilling the expectations of customers and end-users is a high priority. Indium would like to recommend performance testing for all applications with a good customer base, irrespective of how it is being hosted. Imagine your frustration if your GPS directs you to take a turn after you’ve crossed it because of poor network connectivity. The moment the application slows down or the user receives data in a delayed fashion, the end-user experience will take a beating. Make sure you have done a performance assessment as one of the ‘gates’ before ‘going live’ and save your systems.

When it comes to tools, we can use any commercial or leading tools depending upon the technology stack. Typically, MQTT and web protocols are used. Tools like JMeter, LoadRunner, Neoload, etc., can be leveraged. The tool will be finalized depending on the IoT performance testing strategy.

Fulfilling the expectations of customers and end-users is a high priority. Indium would like to recommend performance testing for all applications with a good customer base, irrespective of how it is being hosted. Imagine your frustration if your GPS directs you to take a turn after you’ve crossed it because of poor network connectivity. The moment the application slows down or the user receives data in a delayed fashion, the end-user experience will take a beating. Make sure you have done a performance assessment as one of the ‘gates’ before ‘going live’ and save your systems.

Modernizing QA with life-cycle automation and AI practices to address scale, speed, security and innovation in the cloud is a prerequisite for Digital Transformation.

The post Performance Testing in an IoT World appeared first on Indium.

In this blog, we will see how to test an Edtech platform for performance issues. We will briefly explain the methods followed during the performance testing of the platform. 

Growth of Edtech Industry

The education industry is one of the world’s largest industries contributing to more than 6% of the GDP. The Education industry is witnessing a steady rapid growth in recent years. The current shift to the massive adoption of online education, especially after COVID-19 has boosted the EdTech market.

Education Technology or EdTech is the combination of educational practices and IT tools aimed at aiding and enhancing learning. This includes remote learning, distance learning, online learning and more. The global EdTech market size is expected to grow from USD 85,818 million in 2020 to USD 181,265 million by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 16.1% during the forecast period.

This sudden increase has caused a massive boost to the education industry with the inflow of investments, acquisition, up-gradation in offerings and more

Starting from AI-powered teaching, AI is playing a vital role in Edtech by offering a lot such as content recommendations, chatbots, voice to text and more.

About our client

Our client had an innovative Edtech platform, powered by an AI engine. The platform was designed to provide digital education experiences to students and a wide audience of learning aspirants for professional skills and higher education. The portal connects over 2 million schools and leverages analytics to deliver personalized learning outcomes for end-users. The app is envisioned to be scalable across education markets, devices, and data by delivering content to a diverse learning audience.

The Application

The application is an AI-based edtech platform designed for students to give them the best digital experience. The application delivers learning content, recommendations, features guided practice, and in-depth analytics. This application is developed on Java and is deployed in Kubernetes environment. The is available on Web and Mobile versions (Android and iOS). The application had over 3 million monthly visitors and the engagement is massive.

Related Article: Performance Testing of Mobile Applications – Things to Consider

Testing Edtech Applications for Performance

Performance testing is crucial to any application and the Edtech application is not an exception. Given the fact that multiple users can log in at the same time to access their profiles, it is necessary to test the application for performance.

Since the portal connects over 2 million schools, our focus was on load testing. We have to be absolutely sure that the application should not crash when it hits the peak.

How we tested the application for Performance

There were several challenges our client faced with the performance of the application. They wanted an expert in software testing services to help them with their application’s performance testing.

As a first step, we conducted a maturity assessment of the application. We also checked the API requests for reliability and performance. This will give us an understanding of the current scenario.

Indium is a leader in Quality Assurance consulting. We always define a roadmap and provide suggestions before the execution of the project. As A Result, we defined a workload model based on production volume transactions and also a research of similar products to arrive at a peak load of 100K

Since we need to test 100k concurrent users, we suggested the Locust load testing tool. Locust is proposed for its event-driven testing and scaling users.

The use case to support distributed and scalable number of users in a single process is taken into consideration to conduct tool-based tests. Locust is deployed using Kubernetes engine service provided by Google Cloud and Azure

API request and response times against user load are tested by progressively adding users and assessing performance until the target concurrent load is achieved

Locust test metrics were captured via CSV file. Server metrics were monitored via the New Relic APM tool and individual pods servers in the Kubernetes environment was monitored via Prometheus & Grafana tool

Reported Performance Bottlenecks in JIRA (defect management) and provided recommendations to meet industry standard SLAs. Key recommendations:

• Hardware Sizing – Number of Pods required (Pods Sizing) for the application server to support 100K users
• SQL tuning: Based on analysis of Queries and transaction traces from the New Relic APM tool, high response times of 3 secs and above are identified. Response times have significantly improved to 1 second, after executing recommended SQL tuning methods.

Similar Article: How Indium performed VAPT to get rid of unauthorized access to premium features? (A Success Story)

Business Impact

Our consultative approach to QA has been the standout feature throughout the project. We monitored performance metrics and provided actionable recommendations to our client. Post implementing the performance recommendation and Regression tests, there were less than 1% failed concurrent access which was down from 8%.

Our team achieved one-second post query tuning after aggressive API load SLAs

Realistic test scenarios and iterative testing to accomplish standard responsiveness of the application to high volume transactions/ 100K+ spike load instances.

We saved money for our client by using open-source tools like Locust at no additional investment in gathering metrics. Our experienced team of performance test engineers contributed to adding the comprehension layer to interpret the tool-generated results and translate them into insights

Indium’s Performance Testing Capabilities

Indium Software has been in the Quality Assurance industry for more than two decades now. Our expertise span across various performance testing services, including load testing, performance tuning, stress testing, spike testing and more. Our hands-on experience in various performance testing tools has always been a key factor in creating happy clients. Want to know more about what we can offer, check out our performance testing capabilities.

The post Testing Edtech Platforms For Full Performance Potential appeared first on Indium.

The numbers confirm this too: as per a survey of 500+ IT leaders and executives, the number-one driver of cloud migration is security and data protection. Fifty-eight percent of the respondents ranked security as one of their main priorities.

Then we have data modernization, which involves transferring the data from legacy to modern databases. According to the survey, 55 percent of respondents concurred that data modernization is a key factor in their companies shifting to the cloud. Cost savings and performance of IT operations rank third in the survey results. Cost is less of a factor compared to other key benefits of the cloud, which is a key enabler for organizations’ digital transformation efforts.

QA or Quality assurance and testing services are an indispensable part of any company’s cloud migration journey. For they help organizations avoid issues around cloud scalability, server breakdown, databases, website crashes and more which could potentially tarnish a brand’s reputation while costing time and resources.

In terms of application testing for cloud migration, the focus areas mainly include the following:

• Functional validation
• Integration testing
• Scalability and performance testing
• Security testing

Functional validation

This type of testing mainly validates the production readiness for applications moved to the cloud. The validation process typically involves the verification of key facets of migrated applications and whether they are performing according to the service level agreements (SLAs).

For robust cloud migration, organizations must verify SaaS (short for software as a service) and cloud services function and validate the end-to-end application’s function.

When it comes to cloud testing an application, the following test cases must be executed to check:

• Whether a valid input generates the expected results
• Whether object references and page layout work as expected
• Cross-platform compatibility
• Service integration with applications
• If the automated test suite is compatible with cloud applications

Integration testing

It must be noted that cloud migration is not only about moving the in-house workload to the cloud, but it also includes managing different variables such as authorization, authentication, integration, security, compatibility, testing and security.

Of the variables, integration with third-party tools is significant. Organizations must ensure their applications are well-integrated with third-party applications and communicate seamlessly without glitches.

It is also mandatory to identify dependencies among applications and the service level agreement with each app – because dependencies between systems and applications can make integration testing potentially challenging.

QA and testing teams must consider the following when performing integration testing:

• Cloud testing with third-party tools when varying service level agreements are at play
• Uncover coordination glitches in the cloud
• Application configuration within the cloud environment
• Resources for integration testing and validation
• Systems and interfaces that are part of integration testing
• Integration of multiple applications can complicate migration

Performance testing

This is a significant element of an organization’s cloud migration success while also being a critical part of application development.

When migrating an application to a cloud service, factors such as scalability and response time must be validated. Through automated performance testing process, a software or an application is tested for issues that require attention.

When it comes to performing performance testing, QA engineers and testers must consider the following:

• Identify the architecture of an incompatible application
• Identify the monitoring needs and setup tools
• Keep track to validate response time with regard to service level agreements
• Carry out load testing in parallel
• Record performance under different loads that meet service level agreements
• Check service level agreements, business transactions and end-to-end flow of applications

Security testing

Security is one of the main concerns of cloud migration, with service providers spending millions of dollars to provide optimal protection for their clients’ workloads.

Given the sophistication and sheer volume of cyberattacks, advanced cybersecurity measures must be put in place to ensure confidential organizational data is secure.

Business process security testing, user privacy security testing, application transaction security testing, data privacy and data security testing are the main types of testing a cloud application. 

Security testing helps eliminate the security risks of software systems and applications. The primary focus for organizations is user validation to go with validating data security in transit, during use and at rest.

The following factors must be considered at the time of security testing:

• How is data stored when idle?
• What are the different compliance requirements?
• Who has access to the data?
• Where, when and why users access data?
• What sensitive data is used, stored or transferred?
• Identify legacy applications running on obsolete systems
• Ensure only authorized users access the cloud network
• Ensure appropriate measures are put in place against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks
• Validate application, frontend and backend processes

Plan for disaster recovery and business continuity

Despite taking all necessary precautions before cloud migration, organizations must brace themselves for possible worst-case scenarios.

The measures may include simple data recovery, taking stock of the various attacks, disaster recovery practice and more.

Organizations must validate their disaster recovery strategies in the event of cloud outages. The following practises will help:

• Periodically test, measure and update business continuity practises
• Update business continuity plan based on test results
• Run simulations and assess team’s readiness
• Validate application instances to automatically restore in case of hardware failures

Summary

As per a recent study, 77 percent organizations believe that cloud technology gives them a competitive advantage—which partly explains why an increasing number of them are transitioning to the cloud. Cloud is powering organizations’ digital transformation efforts and enabling them to build innovative, digitally-collaborative and customer-friendly products and solutions at scale. It is also helping organizations respond to opportunities with greater agility.

Not with standing all the key benefits of cloud migration, organizations must follow the above QA testing checklist to the letter to ensure they avoid security, performance, functionality issues and potentially extra costs, time and resources during IT migration.

The post The 5-step QA testing checklist for successful cloud migration appeared first on Indium.

In this blog, we will see how Indium helped a retail giant with appropriate test methods and provide seamless testing support to drive their retail operations.

About the Client

Our client is a US-based retail giant primarily into men’s apparel business. They are among the Top 100 Omni-channel Retailers recognized by Total Retail. With a global business model, their online retail application is global and inclusive of sophisticated shopping and enterprise features.

Background about the application

The client’s application primarily runs two workflows: Retail and Rental with typical eCommerce model.

The extensive part of their business is the Omni-channel. The client has evolving strategies in the Omni-channel personalization space: buy online, pick up in-store; shared cart; loyalty points earned and redeemed across channels; multiple customer service channels; price consistency across channels Their business operations are heavily dependent on application software from supply chain management, e-commerce, Point of Sale (PoS) Systems to dynamically changing inventory and campaign management systems.

Some of the use cases we handled for QA

• Daily promotion updates in Content Management System (CMS) and its response (validations) in live product pages, banner pages, interactive application of promotions in the cart etc. The frequency of promotion updates typically varies 2 times in a week – daily during festive periods.
• New inventory updates and Product Validations.
• Omnichannel governance: enabling channels at any point in the customer buying journey and validations across various touchpoints.
• Complete revamp of existing pages/ functionalities.
• PoS validations.
• Reporting and Dashboards.

Business Challenge

With a progressive application at hand, the release cycles were at stake. The application needed to be updated and released within shorter sprints with total quality. Key Challenges include,

1 – Increase App Quality

2 – Achieve Time-to-Market goals

3 – Optimize the Dev Life Cycle

4 – Accessibility needs

Because of these challenges, the client required an experienced testing partner to recommend appropriate test methods and provide seamless testing support to drive their retail operations.

Indium Software is a pioneer in software testing services with more than 2 decades of experience in Quality Assurance. We tested the web application suite for Functional testing, Regression Automation testing, Performance testing, Accessibility Validations (WCAG 2.0 Compliance), Database Testing, ETL Testing  and API Testing.

Solution Highlights

Indium’s Team conducted due diligence of the requirements and prepared a Test Strategy report covering:

• Workflow analysis for Retail and Rental scenarios: User Journeys, Quality Gates, Omni-channel touchpoints.
• Functionality, Scope of Testing, Vulnerability Score, Frequency of Updates to each functionality, Business Impact Matrix.
• Requirement Traceability Matrix including dependent scenarios, priority, severity scores.

Test Automation Process

Our team of test automation experts carefully curated a winning test automation process.

• Prepare Test Cases and Test Scripts.
• Test Feasibility and Execution Priority Report.
• Automation plan and scheduling.
• Test Case Traceability: Manual and Automation scope.
• Manual Pilot Testing of Test Scripts.
• Test Automation Execution, Validation and Reporting.

The following were the Test Metrics

• 200+ critical business scenarios were automated.
• 900+ defects were found out of which 160 were showstoppers.

Specialized Testing

To meet the overwhelming demand for emerging technologies, specialized testing has always been a part of Indium’s QA process. For this particular application, we did the following

• Embedded the whole test automation process over Indium’s custom test automation framework that drives the Test Automation process 5x faster.
• ETL Testing for Business Intelligence reports.
• For new UI changes, Indium’s team reported industry-standard Accessibility Validations.

Continuous Improvement

Testing is an ongoing process. To achieve continuous improvement in testing, we took care of the client’s application even after the software testing cycle. We ensured,

• Ongoing maintenance of automated test scripts.
• Continuously improve scripts in line with evolving functional changes.
• Monitor test scripts execution time periodically and optimize e­fforts.

Value Additions

Software testing is all about adding value. Indium with its vast experience in the field of software testing provided the following value adds to the client.

• Participated in Business Understanding and Time-to-market goals of the client to deliver bug-free functionality releases based on Business Strategy.
• SME: Technology/Workflow Recommendations.
• Indium proposed to modernise the Rental division workflow by implementing a CMS.
• Proposed and executed API Automation which was manually conducted and contributed to 15% of overall Test E­ort.
• Automated 60% of manual test cases easing the Test Life Cycle operations.
• Achieved 99% DRE (Defect Removal Efficiency) in every production release.
• Indium’s ADA – Accessibility Validation recommendations were implemented to the client’s application even before the Certified Quality Board’s assessment is done. This led to a considerable saving of client’s budget on Accessibility Testing.
• Process Engineering – Proposed process changes to Development Life Cycle that improved production release efficiency by 15-20%.
• Customized reports for management to review and regular sprint reviews.

The post Seamless Software Testing to drive Retail Operations (A Success Story) appeared first on Indium.

The usage of mobile phones has increased drastically in today’s digital world. The usage of the desktop has gone down since the rise of mobile phone usage. According to Statista, By 2020, the number of smartphone users is projected to reach 2.87 billion.

What Does this Mean to Businesses?

You have to ensure your customers are getting the best possible experience while using your application. Be it the usability or performance. Though businesses are carful while developing the application, it is best to do a complete mobile application testing before it gets into your customer’s hands.

Mobile Applications

Whether it is on a browser or an application, these days mobile users expectations are very high when it comes to user experience. Especially for mobile apps, it has become very competitive. There are plenty of apps in the apps store, you just have to be the best to earn a place in your customer’s phone.

Types of Mobile Applications

Not all applications are the same. Each one is created keeping in mind the devices and technologies in which they will be used. There are totally 3 types of applications.

• Native mobile applications
• Web-based mobile applications
• Hybrid applications

Native Mobile Applications

The applications that run on your smartphone or tablets are called native applications. These applications run on the OS of the device. These are generally reliable and provide high performance. Native applications can also access other applications such as address book, photos etc from your smartphone.

Web-based Mobile Applications

These applications are run directly from the browser and are not installed on the device.

Hybrid Applications

Hybrid applications are a mixture of both native and web-based applications. The application runs inside a native container as native applications. It uses the mobile device browser to render applications and not the actual browser.

The Mobile App Performance Testing Approach

The mobile app performance testing approach in smartphone different from web application performance testing. The desktops and laptops used to access web apps usually don’t face problems with poor network conditions such as latency or packet loss.

However, in mobile applications all factors such as latency, packet loss, network conditions, device type (smart device or smartphone) and bandwidth matters. We should take all the above factors into consideration while performing mobile application performance testing.

The first step of mobile app performance testing services should be to understand the type of application you are running on the device. The three types of mobile applications are

• Browser-based applications
• Native-applications
• Hybrid applications

Browser-Based Applications

Browser-based applications can be accessed directly via a mobile browser. These types of applications don’t need additional software to be installed or downloaded.

These applications are built lightweight and are developed on an identical stack in all device types.

Moreover the responsive design makes it easier to create a multi browser-based application in order to make the application render on different screen sizes.

The major drawback for browser-based application is it cannot be accessed without an internet connection. Also, the application’s speed is based on the internet connection.

Hence, it is important to replicate the user load of a mobile browser during performance testing. It is equally important to test the web page rendering on target devices.

Native Applications

Native applications are built using the software on a particular platform that is installed directly on the device.

These applications are more responsive and faster than browser based applications as they are built locally on the device.

During performance testing of native applications, one has to consider the testing platform, as the code on each device will be different.

Hybrid Applications

A combination of both native and browser is a hybrid application. They are comprised of a Native shell which offers a fast-integrated experience. During performance testing, the user-generated load on the server-side is tested.

Mobile Application Performance Testing Strategy

Any mobile application’s performance is measured using the following 3 categories.

• Device performance
• Server-API performance
• Network performance

Device Performance

In device performance check the following,

• Application startup time
• Memory consumption
• Battery Time while using the application
• Usage with other Applications
• Hardware and Software variation
• An application running in the background
• device-performance-testing

Server/API Performance:

In Servier/API performance check the following,

• API calls generated
• Data to and from the server.
• Server downtime
• API Performance

Network Performance:

In Network performance check the following,

• Packet Loss
• Network Speed

Key Challenges in Performance Testing

• Simulating Connectivity like Edge, 3G, 4G or WiFi, etc
• Organizing different mobile platforms against their OS
• Mobile devices restrictions like resources consumption and battery
• The varied sizes of mobile devices
• Mobile phone usability

How to Set Up a Mobile App Performance Test Environment?

Step 1 – Understand thoroughly the mobile app that needs to be tested

Step 2 – Identify the OS on which the mobile app will be running

Step 3 – Build the test setup

Step 4 – Select the appropriate tool for testing

Mobile App Performance Testing Checklist

It is always better to have a checklist while performing mobile app testing. Here is a sample checklist that will help you get started.

• Check the RAM required for the application
• Check the response time and speed of the application under different circumstances and networks.
• Make sure the user experience is realistic under various network conditions.
• Make sure the essential results are achieved in multiple connectivity situations
• Make sure the application is not crashed
• Make sure the app is performing well in Wi-Fi and data
• Check the mobile API usage bottlenecks and uptime
• Test the mobile app to its limits

Conclusion

This is just a beginning and a high-level overview of mobile app performance testing. Understanding the mobile application is crucial for performance testing. Challenges in performance testing include different sizes of mobile devices, costing, resources availability and budgeting.

The post How to Do Performance Testing for Mobile Applications – The Ultimate Guide appeared first on Indium.

The holiday season is just around the corner and it is time for retailers to get busy for the next couple of months.

One of the biggest sales events of the year Black Friday and Christmas is just days away now.

As an online retailer, this is just about time to ensure your site is ready for this holiday season.

For a brick and mortar store, it is more about stocking up and ramping up staffs.

As for online retailers, it is more about the site performance and making sure the site runs well throughout the season.

Why site performance is important?

Though people still like to visit the brick and mortar store, the number of transactions that happen online is on the rise. Last year, the Black Friday online sales hit a record USD 6.22 billion, which is 23.6% more than the previous year.

Why performance testing

The amount of traffic you get will be doubled or even more in most situations, during the holiday season sale.

It is important or at least in this case mandatory to test your website for performance before the holiday season begins.

Did you know? That 40% of people will abandon your site if your site takes more than 3 secs to load.

YES! webpage loading time plays a vital role in your business. Performance testing services from a leading software testing service provider will ensure your website will be ready to handle the traffic and execute multiple transactions simultaneously.

Test your website for performance

Irrespective of the exciting offers on your website, your customers can abandon you for web page loading time. Hence, performance testing is important. There are 2 important types of performance testing needs to be done.

Load testing

Increase in website traffic can be a good thing for your business as you will make a lot of money.

However, it may turn ugly, if your website crashes due to the sudden influx in traffic. This will affect your business very badly.

Especially in the digital world where people take it up in social media. However, it may turn ugly, if your website crashes due to the sudden influx in traffic.

This will affect your business very badly. Especially in the digital world where people take it up in social media.

A 2-second delay in loading time could cost you fortune. Hence, you have to make sure your eCommerce website has optimal loading time.

Load testing will help you optimize the performance of your website. Schedule a load test prior to the sale so that you will have ample time to fix the issues from load testing results.

Spike testing

Sudden spike in user load could crash your website.

Introducing Spike testing within your performance testing plan will ensure your eCommerce website is ready to handle the sudden rise and fall of user load. This is mandatory especially before the holiday season and during special discount days.

End-to-end Testing

Now that you have tested the performance of your website, it is time now to do complete end-to-end testing of your eCommerce website.

As a first step, prepare a checklist with the list of testing that has to be completed before the holiday season.

Here is a list of testing an eCommerce website must undergo,

Functional Testing

Testing all the functionalities just before the sale begins ensures the website is ready to make money.

A lot of new functionalities could have been added to your website just for the holiday season.

For instance, integration with other new applications, features, etc. It is worthwhile to test all the functionalities of the website before the sale begins.

Security testing

Security testing is not an option anymore. It is mandatory to ensure your website is secure from security threats.

While other types of testing can be skipped (I strongly recommend not to skip), serious security threats may impact your business heavily. Hence, Security testing is a must.

Performance testing

Similar to security testing, Performance testing services is mandatory for your eCommerce website, especially before the holiday sale.

Usability Testing

Though there won’t be many changes to the features of your eCommerce website, it is advisable to perform usability testing, just to make sure everything is fine.

This will be particularly helpful if you have added new features to your website either to improve the shopping experience or for holiday sale purpose.

Mobile app testing

People are not interested to turn on their laptops or PCs anymore.

The smartphone revolution has given the power to people to access everything from their handheld device. For the same reason, many eCommerce businesses have their own android or IOS app in order to retain their loyal customers.

In these situations, testing the mobile app thoroughly will be a good remuneration.

Mobile first (Bonus tip)

According to a recent survey by Boston Consulting Group, almost a third of Americans will give-up sex instead of their smartphones.

I don’t have to stress the importance of mobile-friendly websites here.

Google has made it clear on so many occasions that websites should be mobile-friendly, and it is one of the primary weightage for your website to rank in Google’s search results.

If you don’t care about Google, then you should at least be worried about your future customers. According to Statista, the number of smartphone users is expected to reach 2.87 billion by 2020

You would have probably designed your website for mobile devices during the launch of your website.

If not, it is best to make sure your website is responsive to different screens just before the sale begins.

The focus should be on giving the best experience to your shoppers this holiday season. Since webpages optimized for mobile screens boost conversions and sale.

Stock up

The digital revolution has opened the doors for a lot of small businesses. There are many external factors (which is not in your control) that directly affect your business, such as competition and economy.

You never know, this might be the best or worst holiday season yet for you.

The least you can do is to be prepared and deliver the best experience to your customers.

This blog should help you prepare for this holiday season and keep your website crash-free.

So, go ahead, stock up and happy selling!

The post Performance Testing for Ecommerce – Is your Ecommerce Website ready this Holiday Season? appeared first on Indium.

The trend of smartphones and mobile technology is on the rise and it is not going to go down any time soon.

According to CIODive, up to 70% of web traffic comes from mobile devices.

Testing your application with the help of mobile app testing services ensures that your app runs seamlessly and carries out the functions it was designed for.

Another study shows that about 21% of users will abandon an app just after the first use. Some of the factors that can contribute to this are bugs, crashes, poor performance, poor functionality, and bad user interface. 

These glitches can get in the way of your prospects while using the mobile application. Luckily, this can be avoided by having a well-defined Testing and Quality Assurance in place.

Among the plentiful software testing methods, performance testing will help you to deliver high-quality applications to your customers and it is an activity your team should give priority to.

In this article, I will share some key methods to successfully perform mobile application testing.

#1 Choosing The Right Tool For Testing

You need to have a limited number of required devices as possible; this will also reduce the amount of time and cash you spend in application testing.

Perhaps, you should answer the following questions to get a clear image of what to use.

• Smartphones or tablets? Or both?
• Which operating system does the device support? And is it the current version?
• Devices that are common with the target audience?

In most of the testing projects, you will require between 5 to 10 testing tools. For Android applications, you will require to have a comprehensive approach while selecting the devices from a wide pool of available tools.

In the end, it is crucial to select the optimal combination of tools.

#2 How to test

Analyze

Analyzing the application will ensure you detect the most basic defects and have the developers fix it as soon as possible.

Go through the documentation and understand the application architecture and the business model.

Check the functionality first, then graphics

Using the most popular device, perform a full test on the application to note the application specs that are not covered in the documentation.

Ask questions on functional aspects you think are a bit vague and detect the most serious defects and bottlenecks of the application. Perform another test using a less popular device while you pay attention to these issues.

Take account of basic usability checks

Even though you are testing a functionality, it is possible to detect some basic usability issues along the way, without the need for applying usability standards and special checks. 

Some basic usability issues you may come across may include; too complicated application logic, difficult to understand help sections, bad background color, and many others.

Include the real environment check

While performing the application performance testing, try to gather real environment results by checking specific conditions the testing tools could experience during the exercise.

Checking for these problems, you are ensuring that users will not have problems with your mobile application when; there is unstable network connections, low battery, small free space available, piled up notifications, working in different time zones or GPS, different sound and notification settings, data restrictions, and blind mode.

Manual vs. Test Automation

Many people have the opinion that mobile manual testing is on the verge of dying. This is not true.

Sure, we cannot disregard test automation but there are some instances where we also can’t do without manual testing.

The decision to use what methods are upon you, but as you can see, there are some tests that you cannot perform without test automation.

The best thing to do would be trying a combination of different approaches.

For example, try using simulators during the initial stages of your mobile application testing process, and then afterwards include some real physical devices or cloud-based tools. Automated tools are better for exploratory and usability testing.

Submitting results

Gather as much information and descriptions about the application as possible. By doing this, you will be significantly increasing the chances of fixing and reproducing the defects.

Preconditions

Present all the information accurately. Are there issues with the preinstalled applications? Or the developers created numerous different accounts?  All of these should be mentioned.

Steps

Describe meticulously what you do and what you see. Be very careful and not miss any step.

Environment

Include the environment settings and surroundings used in application testing, including device type and their version, the operating system version for each testing tool, the used simulator or emulator. In case a defect was reproduced on the device used, specify that so that the app developers can easily find the defects and fix them.

Expected Result

Explain how the mobile application is behaving or ought to behave after the defects are fixed. Give the developers of the app actual instructions of how they could not identify the bug.

Additional information

Include here a complete image of what the software tester has done and the achievement.

Try using the screenshots, application logs, screen videos (in case screenshots are inadequate), and any other additional items used to reproduce the bugs such as files, videos, and images.

It is important to remember that profiles used to reproduce a bug should be affixed because in some cases, even one symbol may cause the defect that logs could not reflect.

The post How To Successfully Perform Mobile App Testing appeared first on Indium.

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