Why You Need a Comprehensive Product Testing Platform

The smart connected devices market is expected to reach $68B by 2030. Connected products, whether industrial equipment, medical devices, appliances, or other smart products, must perform flawlessly across various scenarios to ensure reliability and safety. However, traditional testing methods often fall short, leaving OEMs grappling with incomplete validation and operational inefficiencies.

The Current Testing Landscape: Challenges and Shortcomings

Fragmented Testing Methods

One of the primary issues is the fragmented nature of testing. Different teams handle different aspects of testing in silos, leading to inefficiencies and a lack of cohesive oversight. There are several meanings to this siloed approach.

Inconsistent Test Results: Multiple teams using different methodologies can produce inconsistent test results, making it difficult to pinpoint issues.

Delayed Time-to-Market: Coordinating between teams takes time, slowing the overall process.

Increased Costs: Duplicative efforts and lack of streamlined processes inflate costs.

Shift Right Vs Shift Left: Testing late in the release cycle compromises the quality of testing and also the adequacy. There is too little time to detect and fix bugs. It is expensive too.

Poor Collaboration: Teams working in isolation cannot seamlessly hand off the tasks, leverage each other’s insights, and manage repetitive tasks, leading to redundant efforts and missed opportunities for improvement.

Lack of Comprehensive Insights: Without a holistic view, it’s challenging to understand the product’s overall performance and reliability.

Risk of Product Failures: Inadequate testing increases the risk of failures in the field, which can damage a company’s reputation and result in costly recalls.

Inadequate Coverage

Many traditional testing tools cannot handle the full spectrum of tests needed for connected products. This often results in the following:

Incomplete Validation: Critical scenarios, such as over-the-air updates (FOTA) and network variability, are not thoroughly tested.

Missed Defects: Gaps in testing mean some defects might go unnoticed until too late, leading to potential product failures in the field.

In-House Custom Simulators: A Scalability Problem

Many manufacturers rely on in-house custom simulators for testing their connected products. While these simulators can be tailored to specific needs, they often fail to scale with business growth and evolving requirements. The challenges include the following:

Limited Scope: Custom simulators are typically designed for specific use cases and may not cover all potential scenarios, leading to gaps in testing.

High Development and Maintenance Costs: As products and technologies evolve, maintaining and updating custom simulators becomes increasingly resource-intensive and costly. The costs go up as the diversity of devices increases.

Inflexibility: Custom solutions often lack the flexibility to adapt quickly to new testing requirements, protocols, or integration with other systems, hindering the ability to respond to market changes.

High Person Dependency: Custom simulators are highly person-dependent. Attrition of the team or non-availability can lead to irreversible damage to the product quality and customer experience.

Testing for High Loads and Performance

The complexity of simulating real-world conditions, diverse device interactions, and variable network environments makes it a challenging task to test connected products for high loads and performance. Ensuring reliable performance under peak loads requires rigorous, scalable testing frameworks and the ability to replicate unpredictable device and user behavior. Additionally, maintaining high performance across different protocols and handling firmware updates add further layers of difficulty, making comprehensive testing crucial to prevent failures and ensure optimal functionality.

Most custom simulators are designed for the web world and are inadequate to simulate device loads that are required for connected platform testing.

Complex Testing Scenarios

Connected products must operate seamlessly under various conditions. Traditional methods struggle to replicate complex scenarios required for the following types of tests:

Spike and Stress Testing: Testing how the product reacts to sudden increases in usage.

Volume Performance Testing: Evaluating the product’s performance over extended periods.

Endurance Testing: Assessing long-term reliability.

Five-nine Testing: Verifying the product’s availability and reliability to meet the “five nines” (99.999%) standard.

Failover Testing: Ensuring the product can switch to a backup system without disruption.

FOTA Load Testing: Testing over-the-air updates critical for maintaining and upgrading connected products.

Adherence to Multiple Protocols

Connected products must comply with various communication protocols to ensure interoperability and functionality. This adds another layer of complexity to the testing process. Key protocols include the following:

MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport): Widely used for IoT devices, MQTT requires rigorous testing to ensure reliable messaging between devices.

Protobuf (Protocol Buffers): A language-neutral, platform-neutral extensible mechanism for serializing structured data, Protobuf adds complexity to data validation and parsing.

AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol): Used for business messaging, AMQP demands precise testing for robust, secure, and reliable communication.

RabbitMQ: A popular message broker that implements AMQP, RabbitMQ needs thorough validation to ensure efficient message queuing and delivery.

Managing and testing for these protocols demands sophisticated tools capable of simulating and validating various scenarios.

In addition, there are industry-specific protocols too, such as DLMS, C1222, and Spark Plug. Some companies use custom protocols over raw TCP and UDP making it even more complex to manage.

The Need for a Comprehensive Testing Tool

To address these challenges, OEMs need a comprehensive testing tool that completes the following:

Integrates All Testing Types: From load and performance testing to FOTA and failover testing to Edge and Cloud, a single tool that can handle all scenarios ensures thorough validation.

Provides a Unified Platform: A central platform that breaks down silos and fosters collaboration among teams, and enables end-to-end automation.

Delivers Consistent and Reliable Results: Standardized testing processes lead to consistent, reliable results, reducing the risk of defects slipping through.

What a Comprehensive Connected Product Test Automation Platform Must Do

Functional and Non-Functional Testing: Comprehensive testing across cloud and edge environments ensures every aspect of the product is validated.

Support for Complex Scenarios: Handle FOTA, network variability, and other complex scenarios, providing thorough validation.

Streamlined Processes: By breaking down silos, the platform must promote collaboration and efficiency, speeding up time-to-market and reducing costs.

Comprehensive Protocol Compliance: The tool must support a wide range of industry-specific protocols, such as MQTT, AMQP, RabbitMQ, Protobuf, DLMS, C1222, and more.

The challenges of testing connected products are significant, but they can be overcome with the right tools. You need a comprehensive, unified platform that addresses these challenges, ensuring reliable, thoroughly tested products that meet the highest standards. It’s time for OEMs to move beyond fragmented, inadequate testing methods and embrace a solution that delivers consistent, reliable results across all scenarios.