Boston Web Performance - Speaker: Dan Bartow on Testing in the Cloud

Achieving
real performance on the web begins with realistic testing and an
understanding of the application and it's infrastructure.  Testing
realistically and for real results across web & mobile applications
means leveraging the cloud.  Agile development processes, complex
multi-tier architectures, and the potential for massive (and sudden)
load all require a different approach than historical apps.  Come hear
from Soasta, the makers of the CloudTest platform and CloudTest Lite,
about their experiences and why companies need to change their
expectations about what "testing" means.

Dan Bartow is Vice President and CloudTest Evangelist at SOASTA, the
leader in performance testing from the cloud. Prior to joining SOASTA
he was Senior Manager of Engineering at Intuit, where his team was
responsible for the speed and stability of TurboTax Online, the #1
rated, best-selling online tax software. Over the past decade he has
been responsible for the speed and scalability of websites for such
well-known brands as American Eagle Outfitters, AT&T, Best Buy,
Finish Line, J.Crew, Neiman Marcus and Sony Online Entertainment, among
others. Dan has set multiple industry precedents including launching
the worlds largest stateful JBoss cluster and using over 2000 cloud
computing cores to generate load against a live web site.  Dan is a
frequent industry presenter and has spoken at leading testing and cloud
computing conferences such as Software Test & Performance (STP),
O'Reilly's Web2.0 Expo, Amazon Web Services Road Show, and SYS-CON’s
Cloud Computing Expo.

Cloud Testing Bill of Rights:

• The flexibility to generate load both internally and externally
  • Cloud and internal load servers, unlimited VUs, self deployed or managed on demand
• The ability to build and modify complex tests within hours
  • Visual test creation, automated page creation, transaction
    definition, same tests for lab and production, wizard-based Session
    Templates (variable "correlation"), object based conditional logic,
    javascript editor
• Support for dynamic web and mobile technologies and protocols
  • AJAX, HTML5, Flash, FLEX (AMF), Silverlight, SOAP, REST, WFC
• Elastic, globally distributed test environment
  • Minimum of 10 major metro locations supporting at least 10,000 VUs per location
• Dynamic and fully automated test grid provisioning
  • Deploy, monitor and manage internal and external cross-cloud load generators on demand and within minutes
• Control test sessions to start, pause, stop, modify, re-start and analyze
  • Pause the load, pause the ramp, fast stop, modify, edit tests
    and scenarios, supplement load on demand and restart as often as needed
    during a single session
• Single integrated view of performance and monitoring metrics
  • Source, aggegate and correlate application, system, network
    & mobile device monitoring data on the same timeline directly from
    existing monitors such as CA (Wily) Introscope, IBM Tivoli, AppDynamics
    and Device Anywhere 
• Rapidly isolate performance issues in real time at any scale
  • Drill into TBs of correlated metrics during test sessions to
    identify issues spanning web page elements, network, load balancers,
    firewalls, web and application servers, databases, 3rd party services
    and CDNs
• Test platform that allows functional and load testing from lab to production
  • Functional and performance test automation; test assets that
    easily transfer as environments change; easily integrated to build
    management systems; cross-project, cross-test reporting.
• Affordable enough for high iteration, everyday testing at Agile speeds

Map: http://goo.gl/zWMqz

Street View: http://goo.gl/Yjs3U

Schedule:

6:30-7:15 Eat pizza and meet other members

7:15-8:15 Presentation

8:15-9:00 Q&A, general socializing and more pizza eating