After System Testing: Don't Forget Infrastructure Testing

Traditionally, testing IT applications is done in isolation on a stand-alone platform. However, when applications interface with the corporate IT infrastructure, you need to plan, engineer, and execute an additional level of integration testing. David Watt describes a typical IT infrastructure and the historical problems, costs, and complexities of conducting infrastructure integration testing. Because of the complexities common to many IT infrastructures, this level of testing is often ignored and omitted. David explains how enhancements to testing techniques and test process management can remediate many of these complexities and make infrastructure integration testing possible. David introduces the concept of an Enterprise Test Bed and explains how strict management techniques can make this resource a reality for your infrastructure integration testing. Of course, if you'd rather, you can always conduct this forgotten level of testing by simply turning the system over to the users to perform these tests in production.