Broadcom Service Virtualization Reviews

The two most valuable features for us are:

• Service Virtualization – It provides us with the ability to replace real downstream systems with virtual systems.
• Test Automation – It enables us to trigger events and automate test cases.

• It reduces cost when we can replace expensive downstream systems.
• It improves speed of testing when systems are not always available.

The biggest area of improvement is in the licensing. The licensing costs are very high.

I've used it for over four years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

There were no issues with the stability.

There have been no issues scaling it.

Technical support is excellent. I rate is a 9 out of 10.

We originally used Green Hat, but CA Service Virtualization provides greater flexibility.

The product is relatively simple to install and use. The complexities generally relate to system connectivity restrictions within the organization.

We developed using our existing contracting partners with support from the vendor.

Think “outside the box” when you think about how this product can be used. Don’t just think it can emulate systems because it can do much, much more.

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 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.

Pathfinder, VS Easy

Ability to implement WSDL validations in the model using the built-in assertions.

The virtual services for Stress, Volume and Performance testing for applications which reduced the cost and also eliminated the dependencies of other applications and third party software.

Not all protocols are supported, but I've heard there will be a feature in version 8 with the help of which we can create models for those scenarios as well (surely a few limitations will exist).

3+

Sometimes, different versions of tools differ in behavior and new versions don't completely provide backwards compatibility.

Example: lack of ability to deploy a service built in LISA 7 to LISA 6 VSE using LISA 7 workstation.

When creating services with database steps, if the DB goes down the services will end and once the DB is up the services will be still be in an ended state, and a manual start will be required.

Triggering multiple requests sometimes increases the response time even though loadbalancers are used.

Customer service is very good.

Good.

We were using LISA 6, THEN upgraded to LISA 7.5 as the new features were beneficial for meeting business requirements.

Initial setup for Workstation is straightforward although setting an agent and broker for pathfinder to use recording is bit complex.

We implemented through a vendor team.

We have eliminated the complete dependency for all the backend systems for SVP (Stress,Volume and Performance). Testing using Service Virtualization saved huge amounts. Using service virtualization we have implemented a shift left concept to enable different teams to work in parallel instead of waiting for other teams to start the work, this also reduced the overall budget for the program.

A few other options were considered from Parasoft, HP and IBM.

The most valuable feature is the ability to create systems. We use TIBCO for our integration; the ability to create those systems when they are not available to us is very effective.

It has helped our organization in term of its availability and being able to create systems immediately. This happens in cases when our developers are held up or when we have to spend a lot of time switching between development and testing; that can really slow us down. This causes problems sometimes when we forget to disconnect and reconnect.

I would like to see improvements in the naming conventions. The current naming conventions of CA Service Virtualization are hard to use.

 I haven't seen any problems with stability. It looks pretty stable.

In terms of scalability, we're just getting started so we're just going through examples. CA is on site and they are taking us through the process. We haven't really gotten into the scale end too much. We are just taking small chunks and proving the concept.

CA came in and installed it. It seemed like it was a straightforward installation as long as you know what you're doing. I couldn't just do it out-of-the-box, but it seemed like it was pretty straightforward.

We're getting into the lean and agile process and one of the problems we have is the testing and delivery time frame. We're looking to improve the overall quality of the product. The code helped the efficiency of our programmers in the overall process.

I suggest just getting in and start using it. That is the best case scenario for us, to actually start proving the concept.

When selecting a vendor, I would look at support, the functionality of the product, and how well it performs. I would suggest starting small, take it in small chunks, and just start using it.

When we previously used CA SV we saw tremendous results, and went live with almost a 0% defect rate.

We use it for Service Visualization and to run tests to validate our services response with the database.

With CA SV it took 2.10 minutes as opposed to 210 minutes for a total validation per scenario. This reduced the development cycle time and provided a product with no defects from a QA perspective.

Performance and cost.

I used it a year ago and recently started using it again.

CA SV takes up lot of your system resources.

Test - service layer component testing automation)

Virtualize - the best mocking/stubbing tool I've ever seen, allows for easier data management

With Service Virtualization being a newer concept and market, there is a lack of high quality/experienced resources available across the board for any of the tools (as of mid 2013)...with that said, a good developer can come up to speed fairly quickly with this tool.

Can't wait to see the integration w/ Shunra, Nolio and Grid Tools in the near future!