Cloud computing: myths, fears and facts

Last time we were writing about Cloud Computing basics. Today we are going to discuss myths about cloud computing. Our main goal is to understand what is real and what is just a myth.

Lower cost 

Probably the most controversial topic about Cloud Computing is it's cost. On the one hand, vendors usually say cloud computing is cheaper then traditional IT. On the other hand, there are lots of examples when people count their cloud expenses, compare results with traditional infrastructure cost and get opposite experience. So, where is the truth?
Well, the truth is that Cloud is expensive but sometimes cheaper. How can it be? There are three basic principles of cost calculation when you are trying to determine cost of your cloud infrastructure:
1. Do correct TCO calculation.
2. Remember about workload patterns.
3. Do not forget about additional benefits of the Cloud.

Cloud cost is like an iceberg: you see only its top part and most its volume is hidden under water. People usually tend to calculate only hardware price when they are comparing cloud cost with on-premise infrastructure. However, total cost of ownership is much bigger than just a hardware price: you have to remember about staff salary, training, operations costs, risk management and lots of other things that cloud vendor do for you.
Another important thing you have to understand when you are considering cloud hosting for your application: workload patterns. There are several types of application workload that work best with the cloud:

Each of the patterns above utilize key property of the cloud: ability to scale up and down. Main difference with traditional IT here is in pay-per-use nature of the cloud: you don't have to pay for resources when you don't use them. With traditional IT you have to pay in advance for all resources you need and it is not so easy to get rid of them in case they are no longer needed.
And what if you have this:

Well, maybe it means cloud is not suitable for your case. Or you forgot about additional benefits of the cloud. What are these benefits?

Additional Benefits

First of all, cloud allows you to transfer your capital expenses to operational. Basically it means you don't have to pay in advance for your infrastructure. It is usually easier to pay money after you serviced your clients and got money from them than to pay in advance when you are still not sure if anyone will actually buy  your service.

Another great benefit of the cloud: faster time-to-value. With cloud you can shorten time, required for infrastructure setup from months to hours. It is very important for big enterprises, where IT services are often terribly slow. Sometimes it takes several months to buy and setup servers for some particular application. At the same time with the cloud it takes just several minutes to allocate resources and deliver them to development team. It means additional flexibility and agility for your business which automatically leads to competitive advantage.

And the last but not least: with cloud computing you can focus on your core business and don't care about IT infrastructure management. Let professionals do their part of job and focus on your part.

Fears

Cloud is still something new and unknown for lots of people. People are usually scared by new things and cloud is not an exception in this case. We are going to review most common fears about the cloud and determine whether they are real or not.

Security

Security is probably the most discussed thing about the cloud in the enterprise community. Businesses want to leverage cloud benefits, but they are worried about their data which sometimes is their biggest asset. How to make sure that data is secured in the cloud? Let's take a look at facts. Security risks in the cloud are pretty much the same as in your own data-center. Really. If you don't make some extraordinary efforts to secure your data center from unauthorized access, you have the same security as in the cloud. Moreover cloud providers continuously improve their security which probably means that your data center actually might be less secured. Simply because big vendors hire world's best security engineers and you usually don't.

Most vendors nowadays offer the customer different levels of security protection. You can setup virtual private clouds accessible only from your corporate network. You can use numerous encryption algorithms. You can have almost any type of security configuration you can imagine with modern cloud offerings. So, security is just a matter of right usage, not an actual issue of the cloud.

Data control lose

Some people are worried that they can lost access to their data in case of some catastrophic failure. It is true that it can happen, but let's look at the facts. In fact, the data in the cloud is replicated and geographically distributed, which means it is much safer than in most private data-centers. Just ask yourself, are you sure that the data in your data-center is replicated to several devices? And what about geographical distribution? What if there will be some natural disaster in the region where your data-center is located? Moreover, nowadays, if you lost the Internet connection it usually means lost data access is not your biggest problem. It is hard to underestimate importance of the Internet for modern international companies. In case they would lost the connection they could not operate at all. Data accessibility would not be biggest of their problems in such case.

Reliability

When Amazon data-center fails it looks like the whole Internet is down. Too many people host their sites on AWS and when it fails everybody notices that. Does it mean cloud is unreliable? Not at all. Important thing to remember: those guys who fail with Amazon don’t use geographical redundancy for some reasons. Amazon recommends to use it in case you want to deliver reliable service. It is not so hard to build reliable application hosted in the cloud and it is not a vendor problem if people don't do it. SLA is still 99.95% or so.

Additionally, imagine what would you do if such kind of failure happened in your data-center? With cloud you can have a mirror setup in another region or even in another vendor's cloud. It is hard to do have the same within your own data-center.

Performance

People often think that cloud computing is slower than traditional servers. There are various reasons of such opinion and some of them really make sense. People blame virtualization, but it is not the main reason of a slowness: vendors use hardware virtualization which means that for most operations they have the same performance as bare metal appliances. It is true that I/O latency is higher, but it matters only for high performance computing apps, not for most regular business software. It is also true that some of legacy applications could be slower after migration to the cloud. In fact, it is relatively easy to get good enough performance in the cloud if you think about it from the very beginning. It is just a matter of system architecture.

Legal regulations

There are some regulations that restricts some types of data to be hosted in a public cloud. Sometimes it simply means you need a mirroring to your private storage: just to have ability to provide government with physical access to your servers if it is required by some regulatory act. Some clouds are certified to be compliant with some regulations (e.g. there are plenty of HIPAA-compliant cloud storages). Sometimes there is no workaround and you have to use on-premise infrastructure for some part of your solution.

Conclusions

Cloud Computing is still new and evolving technology. It makes it interesting and attractive for engineers, but also there are plenty of missunderstanding and fears about it. Lots of people don't understand how it works, where it is applicable and when it makes sense to use them. High level of uncertainty leads to mistakes. Mistakes lead to disappointment. And disappointment produces fears. In fact, Cloud Computing is quite a nice technology which makes lots of things easier. You just have to understand how it works and what can you get with it. We hope this post brought you better understanding of Cloud Computing technologies.

We wish you Happy New Year and sweet winter holidays. See you in 2013!

GAME LOCALIZATION FOR WINDOWS PHONE 7

Have you ever noticed how serious gamers seem to have their own unique language and culture? From old-school Zelda and MMORPG World of Warcraft to Halo and Half-Life, virtual universes are where today’s hardcore gamers spend several hours a day; many have even grown up in these alternative worlds. So what does this mean for your effort to release your game in new language markets?

There’s a host of game localization success stories out there and your game can join their ranks. By sensitizing yourself to localization elements in your personal gaming endeavors and with little bit of our help, you’ll be ready to conquer the hearts of gamers around the world.

In order to re-create your in-game experience for players in other countries, you’ll want to work with linguists, translators, voice talent and testers who have extensive experience playing games (whether for console, computer, mobile device, etc). Ideally, they’ll also be familiar with your game genre and have an appreciation for the unique setting and terminology. When this isn’t possible, look for linguists who are experienced in transcreation (or copy re-creation) and cultural peculiarities specific to both your regional markets and gamer demographics.

To make things a little bit more clear for those who don’t have much experience in this area, take a look at a small demo game developed using Microsoft XNA framework and Visual C# for Windows Phone 7. 

Dive into the Cloud: brief technology introduction

Cloud Computing is one of the most speculated terms in IT industry last couple of years. We call "cloud" lots of things, sometimes absolutely different. We're starting the series of posts, dedicated to large set of technologies somehow related to Cloud Computing. We start our journey from the very beginning: let's define cloud and understand what does it mean.

Historical excursus

Cloud sounds like something very new. But history tends to be cyclic: if something is happening there is probability that it was already happening before. Before we start, let's get back in time and see if cloud is really something new, or it is just something very old and known. We will travel in time for more than hundred years, to 1882. This year Thomas Edison, one of the most famous inventors of the 19th century, launched Edison Electric Light Station - first ever public electric power plant. You might be wondering, how does it related to Cloud Computing? Well, let's take a look how people used electricity before first power plants were launched. 

Thomas Edison

It was quite a big challenge to have electric power at that time. If you need electricity in 19th century you have to buy steam-powered electricity generator. You also have to buy coal for it. And don't forget to hire someone to feed it with coal and repair the generator if it is broken. And yeah, if it is broken - you just don't have electricity at all. And what is really awkward: you have to find place for it and then suffer from it's noise and stink. Sounds like not a very nice perspective, right? 

And here comes Edison. His company offered people to pay for electricity, produced somewhere far away from their houses and delivered to them via wires. There is no coal. There is no workers. Finally, there is no stink and noise. We could only imagine how those victorian gentlemen were standing in queues shouting "Sir, could you please take my money?". Nowadays, we would say that it was massive win of Edison's startup. 

If you compare Cloud Computing with traditional in-house IT infrastructure you will probably find out that computing power is very similar to electricity. With traditional infrastructure you have to buy servers. You also have to pay for electricity. You have to hire system administrator. Nothing works if server is broken. Finally, server room is very noisy place. The only difference: servers don't stink. Usually. In case you use clouds you don't care about all of these problems. You just pay money and service provider does all the job for you. 

Definition

Cloud Computing is quite a fuzzy term. Lots of people mean very different things when they talk about cloud technologies. One might be wondering, why does it happen? It is like in the ancient story about blind men and an elephant:

Once an elephant came to a small town.  People had read and heard of elephants but no one in the town had ever seen one.  Thus, a huge crowd gathered around the elephant, and it was an occasion for great fun, especially for the children.  Five blind men also lived in that town, and consequently,  they also heard about the elephant.  They had never seen an elephant before, and were eager to find out about elephant.

Then, someone suggested that they could go and feel the elephant with their hands.  They could then get an idea of what an  elephant looked like. The five blind men went to the center of the town where all the people made room for them to touch  the elephant.

Later on, they sat down and began to discuss their experiences.  One blind man, who had touched the trunk of the elephant, said that the elephant must be like a thick tree branch.  Another who touched the tail said the elephant probably looked like a snake or rope.  The third man, who  touched the leg, said the shape of the elephant must be like a pillar.  The fourth man, who touched the ear, said that the elephant must be like a huge fan; while the fifth, who touched  the side, said it must be like a wall.

They sat for hours and  argued, each one was sure that his view was correct.  Obviously, they were all correct from their own point of view, but no one was quite willing to listen to the others.  Finally, they decided to go to the wise man of the village and ask him who was correct.  The wise man said, “Each one of you is correct; and each one of you is wrong.   Because each one of you had only touched a part of the elephant’s body.  Thus you only have a partial view of the animal.  If you put your partial views together, you will get an idea of what an elephant looks like.”

The moral of the story is that each one of us sees things exclusively within one’s point of view.  We should also try to understand other people’s points of view.  This will enable us to get a proper perspective on different  situations and events.

What can we learn from this ancient story? One's understanding of something is highly dependent on theirs perception of the thing. Those people who use SaaS say that Cloud is SaaS. Those who use VMware products say that Cloud is Virtualization. Those who use Apple products say that Cloud is synchronization service for their mobile devices. All of them are right. Cloud could be very different. But we need some kind of definition just to be on the same page when we talk about it. There are several of them, but here at ELEKS we usually use only one, called OSSM:

• On-demand: resource is already setup and ready to be deployed
• Self-service: customer chooses what they want, when they want it
• Scalable: customer can choose how much they want and ramp up if necessary
• Measurable: there’s metering/reporting so you know you are getting what you pay for

You can use mnemonic phrase "Cloud is OSSM" (read it like 'awesome') to remember.
Let's try to apply it to several popular "clouds":
1. Amazon EC2. When you ask about new virtual machine it is ready to be deployed. It is completely self-service. You can choose how many instances do you want. And of course there are lots of reporting that allows you to measure usage. Passed.
2. Dropbox. When you ask about additional storage it is ready to be allocated for you. You can do it by your own. You can buy more space in case you want it. And you can see how much space do you really use. Passed.
3. Virtual server farm operated by your IT staff. If they have enough servers they are ready to deploy your VM on-demand. Usually you can't allocate new VM by yourself, you have to ask your IT guys to do it. It could be scalable, but usually it is not measurable: you don't have access to list of all your VMs and don't understand how they are used. Failed.

Basic vocabulary

There are few buzzwords that are usually used within same context with the cloud. We need to clarify them before we proceed to next topics about the cloud. 

Service models

SaaS. PaaS. IaaS. [Software|Platform|Infrastructure]-as-a-Service. What does it mean? What is a cloud and what is not? Well, technically you can build any of these in way it wouldn't be OSSM. But I wouldn't recommend you to do it.

Let's take a look at IT infrastructure. We can imagine it as technology stack with network layer at the bottom and applications at the top. Difference between traditional IT, IaaS, PaaS and SaaS is in management responsibilities between you and your vendor:

In traditional IT you manage everything, starting with network and finishing with apps. When you use some IaaS cloud service (think Amazon EC2) vendor does all hardware management for you. But you are still responsible for all software layers: operating system, database, frameworks, runtimes etc. PaaS is higher level option where vendor provides you with fully configured platform that runs your applications (usually it means you have to adtopt your apps somehow, but cost of adoption usually is not so big). SaaS is top-level service option: vendor manages all components of your IT stack. People usually tend to compare all three models, but we won't do it. All three models are useful, they just have different goals and user audience. 

Basically, IaaS is an option for system administrators (or operations team) who don't want to deal with hardware. With IaaS they can just create virtual infrastructure, programmatically configure it and have fun. PaaS is an option for software engineers that don't want to deal with system administrators. PaaS allows them to deploy their apps to abstract platform that incapsulates all the stuff, related to hardware, configuration and other things. And, finally, SaaS is cloud for end-users: they just got their software working and ready to use, without any involvement of IT stuff or developers. 

Hosting models

Another kind of buzzword usually used with the cloud is hosting models. People talk about public, private and hybrid clouds. What does it mean? 

Public cloud is a cloud infrastructure made available to the general public or a large industry group and owned by an organization selling cloud services. Private cloud is cloud infrastructure operated solely for an organization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise. And finally, hybrid cloud is any combination of private and public clouds working together. Very simple, right?

Conclusions

Cloud computing is one of the most interesting areas of IT nowadays. Cloud market is growing very fast and producing new opportunities for businesses one by one.
Electric power analogy is very nice for better understanding of the future of the cloud computing. Almost no one have their own power generators nowadays. Same thing will happen with computing once: people will have thin terminals (e.g. mobile devices) that will be used for accessing massive computing facilities in the cloud.
Using OSSM definition you can check whether service is really cloud or you are victim of aggressive marketing that attach cloud label to anything in order to sell it. You can better understand key properties of cloud services when you build them.
Different service models allow you to manage only those parts of your IT stack you want to manage. With public, private and hybrid clouds you can share infrastructure with other people, own it completely or use some combination of the above.
See you next time. Stay tuned!

Android vs. iOS: UI/UX Differences

Challenge

Create application that supports both platforms (iOS and Android) and has a similar functionality optimized for interaction design principles and users expectations unique to each platform.

Environment

The important thing to keep in mind is that iOS and Android environments are based on unique for each platform guidelines, user interaction architecture and design patterns. There is a number of iOS and Android similarities in look and behavior of various UI components like

• information structure; 
• basic UI elements (sliders, checkboxes, tabs, text boxes, fields etc.); 
• list-based navigation; 
• majority of gesture touch controls (excluding “tap and hold” gesture, which is commonly used to reveal contextual bar with options or enter a data selection mode).

However the number of differences is worth paying attention to. Below you may find a short overview of the core design peculiarities that should help better understand differences in the design approach for both Android and iOS.

1. “Back” navigation. 
In iOS applications “back” option is placed in the upper-left corner of the navigation bar. It is used to navigate backward within the defined screens in the application however it is not used to navigate backward across the entire device.
In Android devices there are two types of “back” actions: “up and “back”. “Up” is placed in the upper-left corner of the top bar and is used to navigate up the application’s information hierarchy. In contrast, “back” option is presented as a button on the physical device that allows navigating backward across the entire device.

Back navigation in GMail for Android and Dropbox for iOS

2. Top navigation. 
In iOS applications tab navigation is placed at the bottom of the screen. In addition, according to iOS guidelines there are no more than 5 tabs displayed at a time.
In Android applications tabs are recommended to be placed at the top of the screen. Besides scrollable tabs are allowed to be used in case there are more tabs than can fit in the viewable screen width.

Top navigation in Google Play and Dropbox for iOS

3. Switching between various data views.
In iOS applications switching between views of the single set of data is typically done through the bar divided into segments.  Each segment is responsible for one view.
In Android applications switching between views is done through the UI control “spinner”. This control is presented like a drop-down list of options. “Spinner” is usually placed at the top action bar.

Switching between data views in Google Calendar for Android and iOS Calendar

4. Search.
In iOS applications the searching UI control is placed at the top of the screen mainly.
In Android applications several searching options are available:

• “search bar” at the top of the screen that is similar to the iOS approach. However the bar is hidden until the user clicks on the search icon;
• “search widget” that can be placed anywhere within the application interface. Coomonly it is used within the application’s action bar at the top of the screen.

Search in Google Play and Foursquare for iOS

5. Actions. 
In iOS applications can be accessed through the toolbar that contains action buttons, through the action button that is in the upper-right corner hand side of the navigation bar or through the buttons within the interface screen.
In Android applications it is recommended to display actions in the action bar at the top of the screen. If there is any need in displaying more actions than can fit on the action bar, either an action overflow icon appears on the action bar for devices that don’t have a hardware “menu” button, or the user accesses additional actions by pressing a hardware “menu” button on devices where there is one. Android applications may also use contextual action bar. A contextual action bar is a temporary action bar that overlay the app's action bar for the duration of a particular sub-task.

Actions in GMail for Android and GMail for iOS

6. Screen sizes and resolutions. 
iOS phones, for instance, come in two screen sizes and three resolutions (including the latest iPhone 5).
Android devices are represented by a lager list of screen sizes and screen resolutions. This issue has a significant impact on the layout while designing the application.

Summary

It may appear as the straightforward idea to create one application for both platforms however important issue to consider is that interface elements of both platforms are not the same.
Though application’s core features and functionality may be the same on both platforms application’s interface should follow specific for each platform guidelines. Therefore to meet user expectations and ensure smooth user experience application’s design should be adapted to the unique platform design patterns and respect native UI standards.

by Iryna Pantel, UX Designer

Why use Exploratory Testing?

Why Do We Need Exploratory Testing?

• At times, it helps in revealing many unknown and un-detected bugs, which is very hard to find out through normal testing.
• As it covers almost all the normal types  of testing, it helps improving our productivity in terms of covering the scenarios in scripted testing and those which are not scripted as well.
• It is a learn and work type of testing activity where a tester can learn more and understand the software if he/she was not able to reveal any potential bug.
• Although disliked by many, helps testers in learning new methods, test strategies, and also think out of the box and attain more and more creativity.

Advantages of Exploratory Testing:

• It can uncover bugs, which are normally ignored (or hard to find) by other testing strategies.
• It helps testers learn new strategies, expand the horizon of their imagination that helps them in understanding and executing more and more test cases, and finally improve their productivity.
• It helps tester in confirming that he/she understands the application and its functionality properly and has no confusion about the working of even a smallest part of it, hence covering the most important part of requirement understanding.
• As in case of this testing, we write and execute the test cases simultaneously. It helps in collecting result-oriented test scripts and shading a load of unnecessary test cases which do not yield a result.
• Exploratory testing covers almost all types of testing, hence tester can be sure of covering various scenarios once the testing is performed at the highest level (i.e. if the exploratory testing performed, it can ensure that all the possible scenarios and test cases are covered). 
  
  
  by Andriy Skop, QA Project Lead

Exploratory Testing Styles

There are different Exploratory Testing Styles and variations that often yield similar results. What follows are some styles I've observed.

Intuit

This is the most common style. Testers who haven't learned specific exploratory testing techniques tend to do this naturally. When you ask them what they are doing when they are testing in the absence of pre-scripted test cases, they may say, "I don't know why I did that," or that they are using their intuition. Intuition is just a fancy way of saying, "I am doing this because of the insight I have based on my experience and knowledge." It can appear to be random or chaotic, but when the tester is pressed for an explanation of what he did, a structure and purpose emerge.