Impact of the Vendor Lock-in Problem on Testing as a Service (TaaS)

Testing as a Service (TaaS) is a new business and service model that provides efficient and effective software quality assurance and enables the use of a cloud for the meeting of quality standards, requirements and consumer's needs. However, problems that limit the effective use of TaaS involve lack of standardization in writing, execution, configuration and management of tests and lack of portability and interoperability among TaaS platforms - the so-called lock-in problem. The lock-in problem is a serious threat to software testing in the cloud and may become critical when a provider decides to suddenly increase prices, or shows serious technical availability problems. This paper proposes a novel approach for solving the lock-in problem in TaaS with the use of design patterns. The aim to assist software engineers and quality control managers in building testing solutions that are both portable and interoperable and promote a more widespread adoption of the TaaS model in cloud computing.