ChatGPT(1), along with Bing’s AI platform and Google Bard, is taking the world by storm with many using it to provide real-world answers to questions that look as if they have been written by a human being.
We decided to put this to the test, so John Wilson, Qualitest’s Digital Engineering Evangelist and Caleb Billingsley, Qualitest’s Sector Leader of Information, Media/Entertainment and Education Business “interviewed” ChatGPT about a topic they know a thing or two about – “Cloud First” – and asked it a series of questions designed to test ChatGPT’s knowledge of this key area.
The results of the interview conducted by John and Caleb are as insightful as they are interesting:
Caleb Billingsley: ChatGPT, so what is “Cloud First”?
ChatGPT: “It is a strategy that prioritizes the use of cloud computing services for deploying new applications and services. It means that when an organization plans to develop new systems or applications, they will first consider cloud-based solutions before on-premises infrastructure.
The Cloud First approach emphasizes the benefits of cloud computing, such as scalability, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility. It also encourages the adoption of cloud-based services and applications instead of investing in on-premises infrastructure.
The Cloud First strategy can help organizations reduce costs and increase agility by leveraging the capabilities of cloud computing. It can also enable them to scale their resources up or down based on their needs, improve their security posture, and enhance their overall productivity.”
Caleb Billingsley: ChatGPT, that is a detailed explanation. At Qualitest, we see our customers looking to default to the cloud unless there is a clear business reason to leverage on-premise solutions. Our customers see costs, scalability, and availability as reasons to pick leading cloud platforms. We often see that quality is assured versus engineered. John, what would you ask ChatGPT about quality and “Cloud First?”
John Wilson: ChatGPT, what role does assurance and application testing play in “Cloud First?”
ChatGPT: “Assurance and application testing play a crucial role in the Cloud First strategy. When migrating applications to the cloud or deploying new applications in the cloud, it’s important to ensure that they work correctly and meet the organization’s requirements. Assurance and application testing help organizations to achieve this.
Assurance involves ensuring that the cloud-based systems and applications meet specific requirements, such as performance, reliability, and security. It involves testing the system and applications thoroughly to ensure that they are functioning as intended.
Application testing involves testing individual applications to ensure that they are working correctly. It involves testing different aspects of the application, such as functionality, performance, security, and usability.
The role of assurance and application testing in the Cloud First strategy includes the following:
In summary, assurance and application testing play a crucial role in the Cloud First strategy. They help organizations to identify and mitigate risks, ensure quality, validate compliance, and improve performance in the cloud-based systems and applications.”
John Wilson: ChatGPT, I think you have a good grasp of the basics. While ChatGPT could provide a high-level guidance, at Qualitest as we breath in and out Quality Engineering, we believe QE strategy has to be more specific and strategic for a successful Cloud First implementation. For instance, at Qualitest we have developed the industry’s first Unified Cloud Assurance Framework (UCAF) that guarantees quality by providing best practices and accelerators on how or what level of testing for each phase of the Cloud Journey. Double clicking a level deeper, we find the key elements of our UCAF include automation first, inverted triangle, design to deployment (performance, security, access), and customer experience.
The E2E Cloud Assurance framework will help you organize and deliver cloud first through our proven approach, and consists of the following phases:
This framework will help you organize and deliver E2E Cloud Assurance through our proven approach. It contains of below phases:
Strategy and planning – discover, analysis and decision, planning and feedback.
Execution phase – prepare, migrate, operate and optimize.
All these phases cater to cloud migration while the Operate and Optimize phase focuses on Cloud Native Assurance.
In this phase we define strategy, understand Motivations, define Principles and Security aspects for Cloud Assurance. During the Discover phase the team performs App Inventory, CMDB, Performance, Data and Architectural analysis. In the Analysis & Decision a deep Portfolio analysis and 6 R’s is performed. In the Planning phase a pilot is performed for the governance and Security Compliance. Finally, feedback on the Risks is communicated.
Prepare: During this phase we prepare by defining:
The main activities to consider are test script validation and regression baseline, PII, regulatory compliance validation approach, data migration validation approach, threat Modelling and access provisioning.
Migrate: Migrate is one of the key phases of a cloud Migration lifecycle. In this phase the team performs:
Verify API design quality / Generate test scripts, Data migration assurance, SAST, DAST, Pen Test, DB ST, Cloud Config Review and Serverless, Kafka Streams, Storage testing are some of the key activities as part of the phase.
Operate & Optimize: In this phase the team performs Cognitive script generation from Swagger API definitions, Comprehensive framework for contract, component, Event Queue and service automation, Observability & Resilience and Cyber Security Assurance. Chaos Testing, Full-stack Observability, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and Disaster Recovery Testing (DR) are few of the activities performed during this phase. QCloud for example is one of the Key accelerators used during this phase.
At Qualitest, we believe in not just performing traditional application testing, we ensure that the applications validation of microservices architecture from a OpenAPI Design Validation to continuous Contract testing or testing Event Driven Architecture is part of the testing strategy to ensure Cloud assurance is playing a vital role in your overall Quality Assurance
In addition to these aspects, at Qualitest we have different service accelerators to help customers in their cloud adoption:
QCloud – Compare
This accelerator helps clients deliver seamless cloud migration assurance. Cloud Migration caters to not just On-Premises to Cloud but Cloud to Cloud as well. It covers 3 major use cases of Regression Benchmarking, Cognitive Visual Validation and Data Integrity and helps compare results for legacy and migrated application in a simple visual way.
QCloud – Native
This accelerator is designed as a one stop shop for Cloud Native Assurance. Cognitive script generation from Swagger API definitions, comprehensive framework for contract, component, event Queue and service automation along with insights at different stages and between stages of the pipeline are some of the key capabilities provided by this accelerator.
QCloud – Pulse
This accelerator helps with auditing quality controls exercised on both infra resources and application components. It captures the events of quality checks at various stages of the release and visualize the Cloud space for high quality product deployment.
In the media industry, the subscription model has huge cost savings and applies to the adoption of a “Cloud First” strategy. This is the result of savings from not having to purchase or maintain on-premises infrastructure. Following a “Cloud First” strategy becomes critical when you take into consideration mega events such as “March Madness”, election results reporting or the Superbowl by ensuring scalability at the peak network traffic.
Organizations should focus on ensuring the application core’s aspects are fully validated, especially in respect to Microsoft Architecture validation or component level validation. In addition, application security should also be considered and ensuring the project is fully matured on delivery using different DevOps methodologies is also key.
Microservices/Serverless Architecture is one of the most common architecture structures when one moves from Monolithic to Distributed architecture. When this type of architecture is adapted, the validations need to be performed starting at OpenAPI specific validations to ensure proper contract test scripts are created and executed regularly.
Application security remains pivotal and remains at the heart of application assurance. Observability or full stack observability needs to be considered and implemented at scale, along with various other aspects of security such data encryption, compliance, and disaster recovery to name a few.
ChatGPT’s answers were very limited, and our experts have explored much more when it comes to Cloud First. They were able to take a deep dive into it and provide detailed responses to help organizations on their Cloud First journey, which is something that ChatGPT could not do. ChatGPT is young and should be used for ideas and for fact-checking. For an organization to deploy a successful Cloud First strategy, experts must be involved for assurance strategy as there are nuances. If you deploy experts at every stage of your Cloud First strategy, you can ensure successful migrations to the cloud.
(1) Text generated by GPT4, Month 03, 2023, OpenAI, https://chat.openai.com.
