Cloud Chemistry: Making SaaS solutions play nice with your application to ensure Enterprise IT Quality
The global Software as a Service (SaaS) market size is projected to grow from $273.55 billion in 2023 to $908.21 billion by 2030 [1]. SaaS has revolutionized the way businesses operate by providing lower upfront costs, scalability and on-demand access to software applications. However, test strategies must adapt with a focus on cloud-based models and ensuring Enterprise level IT quality is still maintained. In this paper, we will discuss SaaS integrations and how to overcome common challenges. This paper will analyze enterprise SaaS integration from the perspective of the four pillars of Enterprise level IT quality [2]:
- Data Quality – How to ensure data synchronization between your application and the SaaS solution.
- Application Quality – How to ensure Functionality, Usability and Security
- Infrastructure Quality – How to ensure Reliability, Scalability and Security
- Enterprise Quality Management Systems
We will discuss lessons learned from various incidents and their implications to overall quality of systems that utilize third-party SaaS services. The lessons learned include keeping up with rapid development cycles of SaaS companies, third-party integration, security concerns, and making sure applications are running as expected to meet business needs during operational support & maintenance.
[1] Source of statistics: https://www.cloudwards.net/saas-statistics/#global-saas-market-statistics
[2] For one description of Enterprise IT Quality, see https://www.pnsqc.org/docs/PNSQC_Brief_on_Enterprise_IT_Quality.pdf
Nikita Deepak Davda
Nikita Deepak Davda is a Lead Test Software Engineer with over a decade of experience in designing, implementing and managing test plans to build high quality software. She believes that quality plays an important role in every stage of SDLC, right from when the Requirements are written all the way until Post deployment. She has filed a patent with USPTO with a solution for “Uninterrupted Usage and Access of Physically unreachable managed handheld devices.” She is passionate about testing applications on the Cloud and enjoys the challenge of testing integration between applications.
Ying Ki Kwong
Ying Ki Kwong is an independent consultant. In the public sector, his roles with the state of Oregon included: E-Government Program Manager, Statewide QA Program Manager, IT Investment Oversight Coordinator, and Project Office Manager of the Medicaid Management Information System. In the private sector, his roles included: CEO of a Hong Kong-based internet B2B portal for trading commodities futures and metals, program manager in the Video & Networking Division of Tektronix responsible for worldwide applications & channels marketing in the video server business, and research engineer in Tektronix Labs.
In these roles, Dr. Kwong managed software-based business operations, systems, products, and business process improvements. He received the doctorate in applied physics from Cornell University and was adjunct faculty in the School of Business Administration at Portland State University. He holds certifications in project management (PMP), ITIL, and IT Service Management. He has served on the Board of PNSQC since 2021.