As businesses look for software that meets the demands of a modern working environment, they are increasingly using cloud computing and mobile technology. Cloud computing really took off in 2011:

While 2012 is still anew and resolutions are still to be made, let alone broken, IBM has started the year in a bold fashion. It started the New Year with a fit of generosity by gifting, well no purchasing details have been released as of yet, Google 217 patents.

These patents have the potential to boost Google’s social network, Google+, and many of its other services by helping them to fulfil the promise of creating a semantic web. This could allow Google+ to identify experts in particular topics in order to identify people with common interests within the network. It would do this by analysing the content of any content posted or read by the user in order to rank them by expertise, helping you get in touch with the most knowledgeable person within your extended network. From a software testing perspective, this would mean being able to find testers who have the most experience or expertise in particular field easily and accurately.

Giving hasn’t been IBM’s only activity this year so far. The giant technologies company has also purchased Green Hat, a company that specialises in cloud software testing. Cloud computing has been touted as the future of computing; connecting all of your files and data to all of your devices to be accessed anytime, anywhere. However, there are many obstacles that must be faced before a cloud based app is ready to be let out into the wild.

Take a look at this video interview with software testing guru, Fred Beringer, for an introduction to Cloud Testing.

As well as compatibility issues (especially in the mobile field) a lot of focus has to be put upon security, as by having your files free to be accessed from any device anywhere, it also implies that without rigorous security your data is free to be accessed by anyone. This is where testing comes in, a process which is reported to take up more than 50% of total development costs. This makes IBM’s move a wise one.

Green Hat’s expertise and experience in cloud development will surely enhance IBM’s Rational Solution section which creates lifecycle management tools to aid in agile software development and testing. They are also making the services available to third party developers through their Global Business Services’ Application Manager Services (AMS). Read the rest of "2012 Has Already Been a Busy Year for IBM"

Disk vs Tape Backup – which should we use?

We currently use a tape backup system in our office, but we are constantly having to replace the tapes and tape drives and in this era of digital media, memory and ‘cloud’ storage it seems archaic to backup our files to a technology that was invented in a technology that has been around for decades (if not more than a century!).

I recently read an interesting post on High Scalability discussing the benefits of both tape and disk backup, and was very surprised to read that Google’s Gmail uses tape backups as a last resort to store their data.  Data from three data centers became corrupted due to a software bug and it was only from the tape backup that they were able to restore the data.

So, I think there are three main options for us when we replace our backup system:

1: Continue using tape backups

2: Use a local disk backup

3: Use a remote (or ‘cloud’) disk backup system

Luckily (to date) we haven’t had to rely on a backup (except when I’ve permanently deleted something by accident!) but the reasons for using them are obvious.

We aren’t Google (you may have noticed!!) and don’t have massive amounts of data to backup but the data we do have is vital to our company and its loss could be catastrophic so we still need some kind of fall back if something did happen to our server and data.

So, we wanted to find out what your recommendations would be? What system do you use to backup your data?  Do you use a combination of methods?  Have you ever encountered any problems with a certain method of backup?

We offer the full compliment of ISEB / ISTQB Software Testing courses, including the ISEB/ISETQB Software Testing Foundation course, the ISEB Software Testing Intermediate course and the ISTQB Advanced Certificate for Test Managers course, the ISTQB Advanced Certificate for Test Analysts course and the ISTQB Advanced Certificate for Technical Test Analysts course