One of the most frustrating hurdles to overcome in the software lifecycle is the availability of a lab for testing. Physical test labs are expensive to build and expensive to maintain. To use a physical test lab, teams must schedule time well in advance, wait for access, and hurry up and get out of the lab for the next team. There has to be a better way of testing in a production-like environment. Well, there is. Virtualization helped us solve this problem. By using a virtual lab or a dev/test cloud, testing teams have an environment as close to production for use at any time for as long as needed. These virtual labs or dev/test clouds remove provisioning bottlenecks associated with physical labs, give testers an affordable production-like environment, and eliminate the phrase “it works on my machine”. Yes, virtual labs or dev/test clouds bring about peace between developers and testers. With virtual labs or dev/test clouds, developers are able to easily re-create a defect ...
I believe technology can be exploited to greater levels than we have allowed. We are constrained by 20th century business models and ideas. Collectively, we need to move past technology for the sake of technology and truly focus on moving markets beyond the status quo!