In much the same way as most of us plug in a new electrical device without reading the instruction booklet, it would appear that too many cloud applications are being deployed without a thorough pre-analysis and testing period.

Microsoft has been vocal on this subject of late, logically pointing to its ‘Local Azure’ emulator, which exists as part of the Windows Azure SDK. This service is designed to enable software programmers to test on their machine, rather than having to deploy every build to the cloud for testing.

Mark Quirk, Azure product manager at Microsoft UK underlines the fact that the Azure platform is a Platform-as-a-Service and so naturally provides cloud-specific capabilities above the operating system layer, so having this local test environment can make a huge difference to a developer’s productivity.

“In terms of design considerations at the testing stage, the ‘Plan & Design’ area of the Azure site is a key resource — as well as the Microsoft ‘Patterns & Practices’ zone, which provides two sets of guidance for building cloud based applications with Azure,” said Quirk.

Source: http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/adrian-bridgwater/2385/test-you-tread-cloud