In our last blog post, we talked about the cost benefits of leveraging a cloud environment for test and development. The cost savings are definitely a huge advantage of the cloud and a valid reason for moving to a virtualized environment.
Scalability is another reason that many application developers and testing teams are transitioning to the cloud. Most test and development projects have their own unique technology requirements and with each new project comes the need to scale the environment to handle the testing workload and later the production workload.
By enabling developers to access a virtual infrastructure essentially on the fly, the time it takes to set up an environment for their test or development project is eliminated and they can truly focus their efforts on developing and testing their application. They are also able to perform their testing process in a production-scale environment reducing the potential for errors when the application goes live.
When the test and development process is complete, the organization can scale back its service for the virtualized infrastructure eliminating IT equipment being left idle.
Having capacity on demand is a significant benefit for test and development organizations that have the ongoing challenge of meeting sporadic demands. The cloud provides the opportunity for test and development teams to have sophisticated labs in which to develop solutions without requiring the substantial capital investments often associated with building and maintaining in-house environments. And, if and when the project needs to transition into the production phase, a cloud environment has the ability to scale as the needs grow.