More and more businesses are investigating the potential of migrating to the cloud. As this migration takes place, load testing tools will have to follow, becoming an important part of any organization’s cloud migration strategy.

According to this Sys-Con Media report, roughly 95 percent of companies are planning to shift between 40 and 80 percent of their IT budgets toward software as a service (SaaS (News - Alert)) within the next five years. Nearly one-third of these companies have already started that shift. An important portion of this budget should be used toward load testing to ensure migration success.

As companies throughout the global market have tightened budgets and reigned in spending, it’s more important than ever to focus on the cost benefits inherent in cloud computing. These benefits are driving the shift to the cloud.

Vendors are also getting into the cloud game with every top IT company offering or developing products based on SaaS platforms. With the growing trend toward these applications and the massive move to cloud computing, load testing is also becoming increasingly important.

Hewlitt-Packard, for example, is currently dominating the test tool market. That could change, however, as other more cost-friendly competitors move to offer load testing tools that are cloud-based and use Web protocol.

Chief information officers (CIOs) have the responsibility of examining the various systems available and understanding the load testing numbers as they consider a move to cloud-based applications. Measuring potential risks against anticipated cost savings by moving to the cloud is undoubtedly where these load testing results will make the difference in the decision-making process.

Those considering a migration from on-premise to the cloud can examine load testing data via e-mail and spreadsheets, but this approach can often be overwhelming. A better option may be a load testing management tool to streamline the evaluation process for faster decisions.

Load testing shouldn’t be the last consideration in a company’s decision to migrate as it does require money and planning. Approaching load testing lightly, however, could result in a poor implementation and faulty deployment.

Load testing, according to companies that have done it correctly, should begin in the design phase of your migration. Some companies are surprised by the number of problems that occur in their first load testing attempt and are pleased that they discovered them early in the process.

Companies that have gone through the load testing process recommend that you build scripts that cause bottlenecking to occur and stability to crash, enabling you to determine high-level results. By setting up worst-case scenarios, you’re able to address the issues before they happen in real-time once deployment is complete.

Challenges associated with the move to the cloud include privacy, security, functionality, and data integrity. As more and more companies consider cloud computing (approximately 70 percent reported going SaaS within the last three years), the technical difficulties of load testing will likely see a dramatic fall as more companies demand cost-effective options.