Glossary
Sandbox Environment
Sandboxing solutions provide companies with virtual environments that they can use to build, test, and deploy software. They have grown in popularity due to how accessible they are, the flexibility they provide, and the significant cost savings a company can realize by using them.
There are many applications for virtual sandbox environments. Depending on your company’s goals, they can be used to improve the development process, identify and fix bugs, to test patches, or as a working directory.
What Are Sandbox Environments?
Sandboxing technology uses virtual servers to test software in an isolated environment. Developers can test specific features without worrying about compatibility issues caused by other programs running in the background.
Sandboxing environments are easily reformatted for repeated use. This makes them the perfect solution for testing IT solutions. A company can analyze suspicious software, malicious code, and other threats without contaminating their own systems.
Virtual Sandboxing Comes in Many Forms
Sandboxing can occur in more than one form. While many companies rely on them for testing purposes, they can also serve as a reliable tool for:
- Project integration. Integrating multiple builds or segments of a project isn’t easy. Sandbox technology lets you check compatibility and validate that the overall solution itself is being developed properly.
- Allowing customers to demo new products and features. Sales demos and virtual POCs usually include videos and other forms of multimedia. Sandboxing provides your company with a more interactive way to engage potential clients and existing customers. They can test your software on their terms from anywhere in the world.
- Performing quality assurance. Testing and optimization is a never ending process when it comes to software development. A sandbox allows you to test, optimize, and enables your QA teams to identify potential problems before they escalate out of control.
Sandboxes are more than just an early development testing tool. They serve as versatile tools that any company can benefit from when deployed in all stages of development, project-level testing, quality assurance, and ongoing operations and support.
What Are the Main Benefits of a Sandbox Environment?
- Easily create and deploy your environments. Creating and deploying environments is easy to do at scale when using sandboxes. You can test specific versions, deploy new lines of code and test them against your control, and more.
- Improve collaboration across all departments. Collaboration is an important aspect of any business. Sandboxes are great for collecting valuable feedback from the various departments in your company because they can be accessed by anyone with the right permissions.
- Access to advanced networking and nested virtualization support. When you work with a reputable sandbox technology provider, you gain access to complex topologies and advanced networking features without the need for rearchitecting.
- Significant cost savings for your business. Purchasing, maintaining, and staffing your own development labs is an expensive process. Cloud-based sandboxing lets you pay for only the services you use.
How Do You Create On-Demand Sandboxing Environments?
Traditional sandboxing environments required a company to invest in the necessary equipment to provision and deploy virtual servers within their office. Running and maintaining these virtual servers was expensive and took up physical space as well.
Cloud-based sandboxing has eliminated the need for localized servers altogether. Creating virtual sandbox environments is now a simple task that is accomplishable by any company’s IT department.
Companies looking to deploy their own sandboxes must find a trusted provider, select the virtual server they want to use, decide what kind of memory they require, and how many user slots they need. Once decided, a virtual server can be launched within seconds.
