We now have the ability to test our complex applications completely detached from integration middleware. This improves the reliability, speed, cost, and simplicity of testing.

I was fortunate to execute a proof of concept with Parasoft with a previous employer. we saw the value immediately. That employer chose a competitor, but only because the competitor product was already in house and there was no cost to using their product. Otherwise, Parasoft would have won the head to head comparison.

In my current role, we use Parasoft Service Virtualization to fill gaps within our environments, to enable testing earlier, and to enable us to test situations within our test environments long before the environments are ready for use.

Service Virtualization has provided a way to move forward where we do not find any way to go. Parasoft Virtualization has provided that feature or way, by creating virtual assets and implementing or achieving the real atmosphere through a Virtual Channel.

It captures and simulates live system behavior from recordings.

• By decoupling less of the available and expensive backend systems, and faster development of the dependent components was reached.
• By simulating systems, many tests can be executed earlier in the continuous delivery pipeline (shift-left principle).

• Simulation of misbehaviour for the service-providing systems made it possible to make service-consuming components more robust.

• I've used Virtualized on some different projects with different protocols and technologies such as: WSDL, IBM MQ, Proprietary protocols and XML. In general I noticed some improvements for organizations.
• Easy integration with another tools in order to boost the SDLC agility. This enables organizations to speed up their SDLC providing test environments as soon as possible.
• Allows one to discover how the services operate and disseminate information in organizations where there are undocumented processes and key individuals hold all the knowledge about specific processes. This is very helpful to have a system vision to create virtualized services as required.

I have used Virtualize in two projects now, and in both projects it has delivered impressive results.

• In the first project, at a major telecommunications service provider in the Netherlands, the test team was depending on an external (human) resource for the successful provisioning of orders in a backend system. This could lead to a delay in order (i.e., test case) preparation and execution time up to a week. Using Virtualize, this dependency has been removed completely, allowing the test team to provision many more orders in shorter time, enabling them to test much more, much faster. It also paved the way for the introduction of automated end-to-end testing and the introduction of an agile software development approach, which was previously impossible due to the long lead times required for order creation.
• The second project was completed at an organization responsible for the transfer of student- and education-related information between higher education institutions and the Dutch government agency responsible for higher education. Within this organization, only a single test environment for the government agency was available for integration with the multitude of test environments at the various higher education institutions. This meant that only a single test environment was available for proper end-to-end testing. Using Virtualize, we were able to create virtual assets that simulated the behavior of the government agency dependency, allowing all test environments to be available for realistic end-to-end testing. This allowed all higher education institutions and their partners to perform end-to-end testing at will, instead of having to wait for 'their' testing slot.

Parasoft Virtualize helped us in accelerating application delivery by allowing us to test early. We were given an application under test when some of the major back-end components were not available, apart from the service contracts being ready. Using SV allowed us to expose defects when they were fastest, easiest and least costly to resolve. We were able to complete system testing, and resolve interface integration issues even before the real back-end system was made available. Our organisation was able to shift left using Parasoft Virtualize.

Parasoft Virtualization allowed us to create a simulated environment and test the code before entering the testing cycle. Also, increase testing cycles without impacting any major line of business and back-end components. Furthermore, it provide us with an environment that is always available for QA, Automation, and Performance.