Patrick Lightbody: Parallelization and the Coming Testing Revolution.

Cloud Computing Conference - Cloud Slam 2009.
Abstract. The tidal wave of cloud computing is revolutionizing everyone from tiny startups to mature corporations. As these companies look towards services like Amazon EC2 to scale their business, many have overlooked the radical change that cloud computing will soon bring to the software development and testing feedback cycle.

Manual and automated testing have both relied on the traditional concept that in order to test software, it must first be set up and installed on a "test server". As tests are executed the underlying application state evolves, requiring either that the server be refreshed before the next round of testing, or that the test (human or automated script) learn to adapt to the changing state.

With cloud computing, it is now possible to clone hundreds or thousands of these "test servers", allowing testing to work in parallel. What was a 12 hour automated test run can now run in minutes, allowing developers and product managers to tighten the time between an initial concept and a QA-endorsed finish line.

This talk shows how Amazon EC2 can be used to provide parallel testing environments on both the server and the client, as well as how other services, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, can even facilitate manual testing. We'll also take a look at some companies that are already enabling this revolution and what else we can expect in the future.

Video of the session: