Broadcom Service Virtualization Reviews

It helps us to remove barriers that we have with dependencies on services that we don't own, or services that don't even exist yet, or services that are junky. It helps us to shift left and do our development earlier without waiting on those dependencies to be available.

I work in a test environment so teams come in and they do performance testing on their solutions. Whenever we can get their solution to work with DevTest it makes everything super quick. It reduces setup time, all the engineering you have to go through, and reduces it by days.

You can create virtual services from a live recording or you can even take raw traffic and convert that into request/response pairs, and you can create an entire virtual service from just those simple little files, and that's super awesome when that all works out.

I think the size of DevTest is pretty massive. It's hard to tell what different parts of it can be used to do different things. It gets kind of big, so if they could modulize it more, and lead you to a common work flow, that would be pretty awesome.

They're constantly making improvements, so it's gotten better every time they have released a new version.

It's very stable. It's very reliable.

We spread it out across, I think, 12 different teams using it right now, and no problems.

I have used tech support. They're awesome. They usually get back within minutes if you have a problem and they can get you up and running really quickly.

I was surprised, because usually customer service is not that prompt. But I've used it probably seven times, and every time has been an easy, quick experience. 

There's definitely a learning curve, but they're there with you on site, helping you get set up. At least in our case they were with us, so that removed a lot of the problems.

I give it an eight out of 10, because nothing is ever perfect, and there's definitely a learning curve to it. But if you put some time into it, it definitely helps you out. 

For service virtualization, you can have continuous testing and development without interruption to your test cycle. For dev test, I been able to customize to being able to test, automate batch testing, and integrate that with my API testing and UI testing. I have been able to use that as an integrator. I have had no issues with integration. We have been able to use custom code to integrate the pieces so we really haven't had too many problems with it.

It's giving us a base start to add some customer framework so that we all behave in the same manner. For example, we've integrated it with Jenkins. We started to use the invoke XML results to integrate with other services to show us results. We can do that in Jenkins or we can do that with some custom visibility tools that we're building.

See below.

In terms of stability, I have to restart it every day. We set it on job and we just restart it every day. Otherwise, it seems to go down.

My team uses technical support. We have had problems with the upgrades. This is because we are on a Linux server and not on Windows. Those upgrades don't tend to go smoothly. We usually just involve somebody from the tech team right away, and just have them go through the upgrade with us. They are very supportive. They're at least a part of the experience. Unfortunately, it hasn't stopped us from running into problems, but at least we have somebody there to deal with the problems for the upgrade. We had to slog through our last upgrade, and we lost our database. We lost our history, which was pretty annoying.

I was involved in the initial setup of the service virtualization. We stood up our own Linux server. The setup was pretty out of the box. It wasn’t difficult. Our developers, though, want it to be easier. They don't like to use it. they want it to be easy to set up.

I would like to see some kind of dashboard that shows all of the dev test scripts that we have out there so that that we don’t have to rewrite the same ones across the enterprise. We can look to see what's there and reuse some of the ones that are there. Right now, it's hard to figure out what we have.

I would like to have some way to enable developers to use it more. They tend to like to go to JMeter before they do a dev test. The developers don’t need the UI and all the overhead that goes along with that. They already understand how to virtualize. I think it's a great tool, but it seems a little thick and heavy and it's very expensive. I think we are able to find open source solutions that do similar things. What I have found that I like is that I can use it to do my out-of-the-box things, like my batch testing and integrate some of my other tests and inflow that I don't get from other tools.

Give it a try.

Service Virtualization allows you to function in an isolated manner. It allows you to not be so dependent on systems that, in traditional testing, causes you delays, causes impacts to your overall time testing schedule, and just creates an efficiency in your overall process. It allows you to duplicate those systems or mimic them in a way that just creates greater efficiency and increases time to market overall.

The biggest thing, the huge time to market gain. The other thing is just financial efficiency. We're seeing huge financial gains in terms of using the tools. One of the biggest things that I like about the CA products is they do what they say they're going to do. From financials, we're seeing millions of dollars worth of savings. We're also seeing time to market gains, just based on the fact that we're not dependent or delayed by back end systems and other environments that traditionally caused us delays.

I think some of the monitoring capabilities could be enhanced. Those aren't necessarily major gaps for us, but I think that would be good. Just some of the real time monitoring and reporting capabilities. Some of the solutions that we've had to create weren't necessarily out of the box. They were successful and again, CA supported them. Some of the reporting capabilities would be good. Additionally, when you're starting to identify your value ads, some of that reporting would help in identifying and calculating your savings.

It does what it says it's going to do. It's a very stable platform. The initial installation and coming in and bringing it into your organization, it can be a little disruptive, but once you create some real strategies around how to deploy the solution in your platform, the gains far out weight what the delays would have been or the challenges would have been in getting it up and going.

It scales wonderfully. We've scaled it from doing isolated projects, one or two projects in terms of our pilots and proof of concepts, to putting it in an organization as an enterprise solution going across huge organizations with millions of hits to the actual platform.

The technical support is great. They're very responsive. Even on top of that, the resources that CA provides, whether it's your account director, your strategist, your sales people, are also very supportive. They're there when you need them. I've called them at seven in the morning, I've called them at ten at night. I've never had an issue getting the right people engaged when I needed them. They also are really supportive of providing escalations when need be. In some of their platforms that are even growing and migrating, if they need to enhance their solutions to fit your needs, they're also there to do that and support you.

Prior to engaging with CA, I had identified the need. In terms of needing to isolate myself from both data environments, back end systems. I knew I needed to do it. I had actually started on a personal journey, working with a couple of other vendor companies to try to figure out if we could actually build the solution. At that point, I was introduced to someone from CA and the initial LISA product, as it was called at the time. That product matched exactly what we needed at the time. It was a match made in heaven at that point. We started down the journey at that point.

There were definitely other vendors on our short list. They all had quality or decent products. Where they fell short was on the service side, which is why I pushed for the CA solution. Backend services, web services, is its primary function. We also use it for some MQ services.

We initially started with a small proof of concept. For a product like this, that's what you would normally do. With that proof of concept being successful, we migrated to supporting an entire organization within the bank that I was working at at the time. We took that solution from there to actually doing an enterprise deal and now pushing it across the entire company.

The product is obviously key. You want a product that meets the needs that you have. The other thing is the service that I get provided by those people that are coming in. Whether it's the sales or some of the pre-sales folks that are coming in. The support that I'm getting from them, the responsiveness that I'm getting from that, is critical. If you don't have a company that's going to be good to you when they're trying to sell something to you, they're not going to be good to you when they're supporting you later. That's all obviously been key for me.

In terms of the value that we were able to get out of the tool, I would definitely probably give it a nine. The only reason I wouldn't push for a ten is ... When we initially got the product, we were growing and the product was growing at the same time, so there were some things that had to be tweaked and some support we needed that wouldn't have made it a ten out of the box tool. I would say where we got it and the way we were able to use it, that definitely pushed it to a ten. Out of the box, I would say I felt like it was a strong nine product.

I would say if you've had the engagement with the CA tool and you've heard the sales presentations and you've heard all the hoopla about what the tool will do, know that what they say it will do, it does. It does it very well. From a market standpoint, it does it as a market leader. Overall, I haven't had any complaints with the tool in terms of the organizations that we've deployed the tool, they love what the tool has done for them in terms of their development, their development cycles, and the quality of the testing and the coding they've been able to do using the tool.

Not in terms of comparing it with a different solution, but realize that it is a disruptive tool in terms of the initial deployment. They need to understand it's going to take some heavy lifting. If their philosophy on deploying a tool is stand it up and everybody's going to come to you and want to use it, that's a poor solution and poor thought process. It is a tool that you're going to have to actively work to deploy. If you put together a strategy around deploying the tool and you do the work, the tool will get you the gains and the advantages and the saving that you're looking for in your organization.

I think it's great to hear what the industry is saying, what peers in the industry are saying is important. Some of our pain points generally are about the same. If they're showing how they can use the tool, how it's be successful for them, it is definitely something I want to hear.

The most valuable feature is that it's available 24/7. If I'm not able to procure all the infrastructure and I have to share it, I'm not afraid to share it. It doesn't depend on who else is using it because I know it's available.

The performance testing guys really depend heavily on us for their volume testing. The developers use Service Virtualization so that they can present a better product to QA. Sometimes by using it, we're able to implement something without even going to QA. We're bypassing QA.

For our current needs, it's doing what we need right now, although it should automatically generate tests to further make our development to implementation process more efficient.

I've used it for two or three years. My colleagues and I inherited it. It was purchased and sitting on the shelf somewhere until we started using it.

We had no issues deploying it.

It's highly stable.

It depend on how much you're willing to spend and how large your company is. We have 5 servers and it's scaled just fine for us. In a presentation I went to, American Airlines has 50 servers and it's scaled just fine for them.

As soon as you drop an email, someone responds.

It's easy to install as there's lots of documentation. Whether it's a small installation, a single server, or multiple servers, it's pretty easy. Again, American Airlines has it deployed on 60 servers. We have only 5.

We implemented it in-house ourselves.

The ability to do parallel development and testing reduces our costs for duplicating environments, improving the productivity of our developers, and bringing products faster to market. 

As far as the next version of it is concerned, probably some additional lightweight, portable elements. For instance, we would like to not have to rely on deploying things to a server, be able to carry it and make it more portable (maybe through the mobile devices), etc. Some of the mobility aspects are what we are looking for, and I do not mean running it on a mobile device when I say mobility, but being able to port it between workstations, and being able to take it and work with it at a smaller scale.

It is a very stable product given that by the time we got into it. We were in version 9.x, but it looks like about 10 years has elapsed between the time the product came out and where it is now. That ought to provide it some sense of stability, and also some guidance as to what the company needs to do to make it a stable product. 

It is definitely scalable. The licenses that we have purchased, we have not utilized them fully. However, given our conversations with the CA product team and the use cases that we have outlined for them, we are pretty confident that it is scalable.

We actually stumbled upon it both in terms of good luck and prior experience. Prior experience, not from our perspective, but from one of our VPs, who happen to work at CA before he came to our organization. Combined with a need from us to not invest in additional development environments for some of our flow-through work, where applications needed to talk to multiple other systems. Also, when we were working on multiple projects, we had a need to duplicate those environments, which resulted in having to spend extra money on it. 

What we stumbled upon was the Service Virtualization tool that our previous VP had worked with, remembered about it, and we started investigating, which led to our investment in the product. 

I would definitely rate it as a nine. Simply because I think any product obviously has some inherent flaws in it. That is the reason why they are upgraded. It would be foolish to say it is a 10 right off the bat. 

Service visualization for almost all types of protocols. Version 7.5.1 has many improved features compared to version 6.5 which we were previously using.

Has lead to cost savings and helped improve the project life cycle. Teams are more streamlined and helpful not only for testers but even for developers.

It's not really meant for Services Testing and reporting functionality from the CA SV console - it's a very basic one. I'd like to see improvements in these two areas.

6 Months

I have not experienced any deployment issues. The deployment process is really simple and straight forward. It certainly has improved in the latest version.

Not really, sometimes we face minor issues with the registry server but that is more of an environment issue. Other than that we didn't encounter any issues with stability.

Right now we're only using it for pre-production, so we haven't yet seen how it scales if we use it for production volumes.

I'm very satisfied with the tool CA has produced and the level of support they provide. I'm only a bit disappointed with the knowledge repository.

8 out of 10. Most of the issues I raised with CA support were addressed within 24 hours. Also, CA actively follows up on the open issues - I've found this to be very good.

I used SOAP UI briefly. I switched to CA SV as it has more advanced features, supports almost all types of services and moreover has better support.

I'm not aware of any issues we faced during the implementation. We have a separate environments team which did the setup for us.

We implemented through an in-house team working with the parent company. However, our environment support team actively monitors all the servers.

It really depends on various factors like the type of project and timeline of the project. Definitely ROI is a lot better then earlier projects when we didn't use virtual services.

Initial setup was done by the parent company and we are just using licenses and servers provided by the parent company.

We analyzed the tools on the market including: HP, IBM Green Hat and CA SV. Each product has its own merits but we found that CA SV is more mature and matches our requirements best so we selected it for our service virtualization needs.

Very easy to learn and implement. Doesn't require extensive technical knowledge. Use virtual services instead of stubbed data.

The CAI aka Pathfinder is a great capability and will help the organization to achieve SV goals and expand the SV to different systems without many firewall changes or changes in the existing environment setup.

The financial industries have tight firewall security where introducing a new product among their existing infrastructure is not a hot cake or getting new MQs created for SV. At high-Level CAI looks like any agent-broker architecture but it does a lot in terms of Virtualization and Application Delivery Lifecycle where Dev or QA do not need to worry and do not need to depend on the environment teams to get the systems logs for triage or fix it.

Finally, last but not least CAI can also help the architects/designers to understand/generate the application flow diagram and analyse any abnormal behaviour.

The major ones for our organization are MQ and SOA Middleware.

We had a lot of dependency on MQ message, where CAI helped to get the MQ details and create VS out of it.

I feel a few areas can be improved, but I'm not sure if CA has already fixed these in the latest version:

1. Agents for different systems. I am not sure if existing agents can support all types of servers or systems.

2. Along with application details, can we capture network details to simulate network behavior?

3. Can we separate utility to monitor the CAI details rather than the portal, because Portal is accessible to all.

More Than 2 years now.

Yes, we had issues when we deployed into Oracle WebLogic server. .

I'd say 8 out of 10. Service is great in terms of community forms, pulse etc.

Technical documentation needs some more improvements by explaining live scenarios.

The technical support team we had for our engagement was really great, we are able to reach them and get everything done on time.

For SV no. We have not switched from any other solution, we started with LISA. The main factors why we decided to go with this tool was the capability towards virtualization and protocols supported.

It was not simple nor was is complex. To set up CA DevTest, you should know the tool and architecture very well along with his installation skills on the particular server you choose - like Unix or Linux. Firewalls and other areas are also very important.

We haven't yet measured ROI with the current implementation.

The tool was evaluated by an architect team. Yes, they had compared it with some competitive vendors such as HP and then purchased the CA license.

I'd like to see more features integrate with the CICD pipeline via APIs or command line etc.

I'd also like better ocumentation on live scenarios with more examples etc. as mentioned earlier.

1. By virtualization, for all dependent services, we are able to create isolated test environments.
   
2. We virtualize fragile services and deploy them with the 'Failover' mode so that we can fall back to the VS in case the real service returns an error.
3. We virtualize third-party paid services, as well as in-development services, to minimize costs and delays.

In short, we are able to save a lot of valuable time. Testers and developers no longer complain about not having access to dependent services. We don't have to share/reserve resources or worry about our development being blocked by unavailable services.

The ability to create virtual services and deploy them as Docker containers, and include them in our Jenkins build pipelines, is a valuable feature.

It was critical for us to prevent possible elements from "unnecessarily" breaking the pipeline. If I'm pushing a particular web service through the pipeline and want that to be tested in isolation, it is a big problem if everything fails due to an irrelevant dependent service.

The use of containers provided a very flexible solution.

The workstation component has a very out-dated UI and is in dire need of a facelift.

There are too many fragmented web components that could easily and logically be merged. For example, Service Catalog, Enterprise Dashboard, Portal, and Identity and Access Manager are all separate web applications. Why not merge them in one web app?

This is a very mature and very stable product, although error prevention could be added into the product, for the sake of improving user-friendliness.

The idea of Virtual Service Environments (VSE) makes the product extremely scalable. Especially with the use of containers, you won't have concerns about resource wastage.

This solution has first-class support, and it couldn't be any better.

I used HPE SV before. It was very user-friendly but cannot be compared with CA DevTest, as it lacks a lot of the important features.

This initial setup of this solution is not straightforward at all. The installation is unnecessarily complex. Again, user-friendliness is not an area that CA DevTest can boast about.