Beef Up Your QA Kung-Fu

For a while now we have been hearing that cloud computing is going to change the world of outsourcing as we know it, and in some good ways. One downside sometimes mentioned is that business migration to the cloud is going to trim some IT service providers because their services would no longer be needed, or would be available in the cloud, on demand, and maybe even cost less. Certainly some functions could be served up that way.

But the expanding cloud needs people. And above all, it needs people who know how to guarantee that applications and anything else running in the cloud is working properly. It needs quality assurance people, applications testers, application maintenance experts. It really needs people who understand cloud security issues.

A report issued this week by Capgemini, Sogeti, and HP projects that growing adoption of cloud computing is going to fire up the demand for application testing and quality assurance professionals. The World Quality Report says that 81% of companies are moving at least some of their IT systems to the cloud. "The emergence of new technologies such as cloud-based services is fueling the need for stringent testing and QA, as application security becomes vital for ensuring quality and mitigating risk."

“CIOs are under intense pressure to deliver high quality applications on a tight budget,” says Raf Howery, Capgemini vice president. “Further investment in QA... will help ensure companies can flourish in the cloud once the technology is fully adopted.”

Consequently, the report says, 42% of the companies surveyed plan to grow their budget for application QA and testing. Businesses in emerging economies are especially keen on this objective, according to the report's authors. There's going to be a large pile of money being spent on application testing.

The really good news for service providers is that, according to the report, businesses will continue to rely on outsourcing partners to handle the QA work. More than two-thirds of respondents said they used contractors or outside vendors for application testing. India, China, and Eastern Europe appear to be getting most of that work, based on the survey findings.

But Nearshore companies have proven they have the skills to handle this kind of rigorous task — for just one example, a manager at a very large global tech corporation told me that he hired a team in Argentina to test a new system and they found bugs he thinks his local group would not have spotted. And as more U.S. businesses awaken to the IT capabilities of Latin America, they will shift more of their QA assignments closer to home.

Nearshore IT companies can be prepared for this new need by not only adhering to international quality standards and methodologies, but also by developing their own stringent testing techniques. Building a reputation as a master of quality control and agile slayer of bad software is a good way to bring the world to your door.