There are plenty of tools out there that do similar adequate jobs, the revelation for me is using load and performance tools from the cloud for web applications, websites and Saas\PaaS scenario’s.
Aside from the services that LoadVerify provide there are a couple of mainstream big players that are moving out to the cloud as well as other services and tools that have popped up including Jmeter. This is indicative of where the future will be. Everything will be hosted and serviced in the cloud, therefore loadtesting and performance tools that test the cloud infrastructure, computing and web based applications/websites will likely to migrate to the cloud.
Previously you would need to install client apps on several if not hundreds of servers to simulate load from real and virtual users. However it seems like the best tools now to test web applications (even if they are not located in the cloud) are tools that can be scaled and directed from the cloud representing a true and external source where you aren’t restricted by traditional testing bottlenecks which predominantly has been resources and cost.
I would consider these types of tools and services the best for testing web apps and infrastructure because of:
- Scalability
- Cheap’er’ costs
- Accessibility
- Availability
- Ease of use
- Geographical load distribution capabilities.
The cloud is our future.
