The mobile phones have evolved from a basic calling device to the gadgets that can do almost everything i.e. from ordering food, availing a cab or simply looking for directions. Over the years, mobile phones have become a major part of the lifestyle for the users and it has become a challenge for the brands to fulfill their ever changing demands. Tones of innovative mobile applications have emerged and the number is still expected to surge in the coming years. One of the most convenient mobile application development platforms is the cloud platform as there are a lot of complications involved in constructing a physical device lab for mobile application testing. Apart from this, it makes mobile application testing simple and seamless. In this blog we will cover why a Cloud platform is the best for mobile application testing and development.

Facilitates Parallel testing 

Device fragmentation is a common issue in mobile applications which can be reduced only by doing compatibility testing for an application with all the devices available in the target market. Testing the application with each device manually for compatibility testing is very tedious and time consuming. In parallel testing, an application can be tested with a range of devices simultaneously. Constructing a physical device lab for parallel testing is time and cost consuming hence nowadays brands use an online SaaS based cloud platform for mobile application testing. Here parallel testing can be performed very smoothly with as many number of devices as possible without taking care of investing in physical infrastructure and devices.

Highly Scalable

Mobile application industry being highly dynamic, you need to upgrade the list of devices regularly. Adding or removing devices in a physical device lab is very tedious and time consuming. However, in a cloud based platform scaling devices is just a matter of seconds. You spend a lot of time and cost in upgrading devices in a virtual device lab.

Accessible from Anywhere and at Anytime

The greatest advantage of a cloud based platform is that being virtual it is 24/7 accessible and can be used from anywhere. No matter how far your team is  geographically separated, the cloud based mobile application testing platform can be accessed for testing from anywhere and at any time. A cloud platform has numerous advantages like being accessible for 24/7, you have flexible working hours, important docs like testing report analytics can be shared and virtual meeting can be organized with the help of good collaborative tools, business continuity can be maintained during odd circumstances like pandemic, you can hire any crucial resource from any part of the world etc, eliminates big bucks in investing for a physical device lab.

Easy to implement Continuous integration 

In continuous integration small chunks of codes are committed several times in a day which accelerates the speed of application development. The process of continuous integration consists of a number of steps like commiting the code, build formation, testing build, deploying build and so on. The key to a streamlined ci/cd pipeline is a robust and a good set of tools which can make a strong ci/cd pipeline. Continuous integration pipeline can be best formed in a platform where the tools can be easily integrated and also which is adaptable to customer's future requirements. Hence in such case, a cloud platform can prove extremely beneficial where the best tools in the ci/cd pipeline can be integrated with the help of plugins or API's which is not possible in case of a physical device lab. So a cloud platform can provide seamless integration of tools.

Conclusion 

As we know how unpredictable the mobile application industry is, we need to utilize technical solutions which can provide flexibility and customization in all levels. That's the reason most of the mobile centric organizations are switching to continuous integration which accelerates the speed of application development as well as allows a pipeline which is flexible enough to adapt to the future customer requirements. A Cloud based platform is the best to form an agile continuous integration pipeline as it has some fundamentally key benefits like facilitates parallel testing, highly scalable, accessible 24/7 from any part of the world and promotes a conducive environment for continuous integration. These key benefits of a cloud based mobile application testing platform won't let you give a second thought on investing for any other testing platform but a cloud based one.