Increasingly, organisations expect remote and hybrid testers to use borrowed tool licences, unstable VPNs, and software never designed to leave the office. That creates significant compliance and security risks that can turn into serious long‑term problems.
It’s not the testers per se, but remote execution over on‑prem licences is a software audit waiting to happen. Read on to learn why a compliance nightmare isn’t the only reason your test setup might not be fit for distributed and home‑working team members.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Hybrid Testing
Frankly, most teams don’t have a hybrid testing strategy. They have a hotchpotch of tools that survived the last budget cut. Some only work on‑prem. Some only work via VPN. Some support remote use (provided nobody asks Legal to read the licence agreement too closely).
If your testing setup assumes everyone is on the same network, in the same building, during the same hours, it’s asking for trouble—and not just from a compliance perspective.
What Really Matters in a Hybrid Tool
Selecting tools for hybrid and remote testing isn’t about ticking boxes on a feature matrix:
- Security has to be paramount. If a tool can’t show robust access controls, encrypted communications, and enterprise-grade compliance, it doesn’t belong in a hybrid environment. Particularly following the recent high-profile security breaches, which are only the tip of the iceberg.
- If it needs a VPN and a 10-page setup guide, it’s not hybrid-ready. Tools should behave like modern SaaS: open a browser, authenticate, start testing.
- Licensing that punishes remote work is legacy thinking. If adding a remote tester means either breaching a contract or buying another full stack of licences, the model is wrong, not your team.
- Collaboration is a baseline expectation. Hybrid teams need shared workspaces, clear roles, and auditable changes, not a mess of spreadsheets and shared drives.
- Scale and CI/CD integration are non-negotiable. If your tools cannot keep up with your pipelines, they become another bottleneck you try to automate around.
How to Choose the Best Tool for Your Team
This is where the conversation often gets uncomfortably honest. Choosing tools for hybrid work is a different ball game from selecting on-prem solutions.
- Stop buying tools that fit yesterday’s org chart. If your testing approach hasn’t changed since the days of corporate LANs and 9-to-5s, it’s nostalgia at best. You need to match tools to the reality of distributed teams, contractors, partners, and multiple time zones.
- Stop treating secure, reliable access as an afterthought. If testers have to fight with VPNs, workarounds, or ‘borrowed’ licences, you risk more than just non-compliance; you risk pushing them towards shortcuts and unapproved solutions.
- Stop assuming today’s work model is stable. Hybrid is still evolving. Prioritise tools that can move with you: on-prem today, cloud tomorrow, different geographies next year.
- Stop justifying tool sprawl. If you need four tools and a licence matrix to explain who needs to run what, you don’t have a strategy; you have a disaster waiting to happen. Fewer, more capable tools are a form of risk reduction, not just a procurement preference.
The Question Most Teams Avoid
Hybrid work has made one thing brutally clear: test tooling is either helping you stay compliant, secure, and fast, or it is quietly undermining all three. There’s not much middle ground anymore.
The awkward question every QA leader should be asking right now is this:
If a vendor audited us tomorrow, and the CISO and legal team read the report, would we still be comfortable with our current testing setup?
If the honest answer is “probably not”, the problem isn’t your people. It’s your tools and the assumptions behind them.
How the OpenText Tools Help
For many organisations, ‘our testing toolset’ is just whatever has accumulated over years of disparate decisions and hastily put-together projects.
A bit of this, a bit of that, some half-supported integrations and a licensing spreadsheet that nobody truly understands. The result is complexity, risk, and lingering security concerns.
The OpenText portfolio gives you a realistic way to replace that mess with a smaller, safer, more scalable stack, built for hybrid teams. Quick tip: in the list below, ‘core’ means SaaS:
- UFT One (now known as OpenText Functional Testing) – For teams that still need rich desktop and functional automation, but want to stop pretending that RDP sessions and shared accounts are a sustainable way to do remote testing. It supports remote and global execution, within your IT infrastructure, while integrating cleanly into modern DevOps workflows.
- ValueEdge Functional Testing (now known as OpenText Core Functional Testing) – For teams ready to embrace SaaS functional testing, this cloud-native functional test automation is built for remote collaboration and scale, including cross-browser and mobile testing.
- LoadRunner Cloud (now known as OpenText Core Performance Engineering) – For organisations that have quietly been running performance tests from home on licences never designed to leave the office. Thisis a cloud-based performance platform that supports distributed teams and hybrid workloads, including critical on-premises applications such as SAP.
- LoadRunner Enterprise (now known as OpenText Enterprise Performance Engineering) – For large, global teams that need enterprise-scale performance testing without forcing everyone through one physical location or fragile network path. Role-based access, shared assets, and controlled environments make it a natural fit for hybrid models.
- ALM Octane (now known as OpenText Software Delivery Management) – For teams stitching together spreadsheets, email, and three different test tools to understand what was tested and what’s broken. This provides end-to-end test management designed for distributed collaboration, with strong role management and integration into CI/CD toolchains. Plus, if the developers insist on using Jira, bi-directional integration gives each team the tool they want.
- OpenText Security Testing (SAST, DAST, SCA) – For organisations still treating security as a separate universe with its own tools, data silos, and release gates. These bring vulnerability scanning into the same hybrid-friendly, automated workflows, covering code, APIs, open source components, and cloud native architectures.
The goal is not to collect more tools. It’s to replace a fragile, home-grown patchwork with a smaller number of platforms that actually support how your teams work today.
When evaluating tools, it pays to consider the present, near future, and long-term. The best strategic choice is a tool that has all the capabilities you need, future-proofing and security built in. It might not be the lowest ticket price, but the total cost of ownership will almost certainly be lower.
What do you think? Are you happy with your remote testing setup?
