How Testing as a Service can reduce costs

Take the pressure off your software teams — use Testing as a Service (TaaS) to save money and time

Software is everywhere, and everything is connected. Whether system or application software, there are lines of code — probably trillions of lines of code — right at this moment that are affecting your life (your home, car, job, school, hospital, city, streetlights … you name it). Anywhere and everywhere, above and below the ground and up in the air, software runs in the background for all of us.

Testing all of that software is not only obviously mandatory, but it’s a time- and cost-gobbler. So, as humans do, we’ve developed more and more efficient and effective processes to develop and test software throughout its engineering life cycle. One of these strategies is TaaS (Testing as a Service).

TaaS was developed as a process around 2009 by a Danish software and services company, and once IBM adopted it, it became widely applied. A cloud-based outsourcing model where a service provider (rather than in-house teams) performs testing activities by simulating client-specified real-world testing environments, TaaS has proven demonstrably to effect significant benefits over traditional testing, particularly in cost-savings.

Cost-saving advantages to using Testing as a Service

TaaS can be used throughout the life cycle of software testing, for functional testing (GUI Testing, integration testing (SIT), regression testing and UAT testing); performance and benchmark testing (multiple users access the application simultaneously to determine its threshold point); load and stress testing (where ‘real-world’ / virtual users place an app under load and stress test); and security testing (executing vulnerability scans on apps and sites).

Performing these tests in-house (requiring hundreds of hours of manual QA or real-user monitoring) has become inefficient and costly. It’s a time drain on teams and network systems. The high security for this in-house is internal stress, and the complexity and variability of software makes each approach functionally a new project. TaaS solves a lot of this to achieve scaling, minimize costs and improve the processes and services, while lessening risk and achieving higher ROI.

1. TaaS is a highly scalable model. It’s a cloud-based delivery model, so companies do not need to dedicate internal servers to the testing activities.
2. Pay according to what you use only. You can segment testing processes and re-test, avoiding the need to unnecessarily run parts of a test.
3. Licensing benefits. Systems, tools, hardware, and app licenses for tests are all cloud-managed.
4. Standardization. By improving efficiency and quality, cost savings are built-in to improved results (often a 10-20% cost decrease).
5. Data centralization. The efficiency of having all information and projects stored centrally is time- and cost-saving and allows easy remote access.
6. Learning curve. Processes for testing are always advancing. This stress on internal teams is avoided using an outsourcing model.

The challenge to invent new and ever more complex software is enough for any internal team. Testing is a necessity throughout the life cycle. Choose wisely how your company best makes use of the intelligence of your engineers. If the testing piece can be made efficient in a cloud-based environment through the use of standard tools and processes, then internal teams can devote their energy and creativity to their core competency: inventing new and exciting software.