Cloud computing offers business benefits without the risk of a degraded user experience. The challenge is determining whether or not virtualized data center environments deliver on that promise.

A virtual machine (VM) performs at the most fundamental level of content generation, which poses a serious challenge for those who need to understand real performance numbers, which means getting a per-VM view of performance versus utilization.

While the terminology surrounding cloud services may be a bit cloudy itself, the goal is clear—to create the dynamic data center and infinite scalability, which can reduce the labor-intensive, tactical aspects of providing IT services, freeing managers to pursue innovation and strategic planning. This makes cloud computing testing an imperative.

An IDC survey shows that the top concerns of IT enterprise organizations are performance, security and availability. Cloud services address performance and availability and are offered at different tiers of service:

If you don’t already know, network convergence is central to what’s driving complexity in the communication networks of today. And despite technology, development and deployment of devices and networks, there are significant challenges facing service providers.

How can service offerings be expanded to support enterprise customers? Is the network ready to deliver secure and reliable enterprise applications? Are they prepared for challenges of interconnecting to other large and complex multi-play networks?