Accelerate Software Testing with Service Virtualization

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EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW Parasoft recently conducted a survey asking software developers, testers, and performance test engineers a series of questions about their access to test environments. Key fi ndings include:

These results indicate that development and testing teams lack the resources required to complete the expected level of testing.

• Testing today’s composite, distributed applications requires interacting with a number of dependent (connected) applications, which are diffi cult to access.

Respondents reported needing access to an average of 30 dependent applications, but having consistent access to only 6. An overwhelming majority of respondents (76%) reported having restricted access to the test environments required for completing their development and testing tasks.

• The time available to access test environments is extremely limited (4 hour slots) and 30% of that limited time was consumed by confi guration/setup tasks.

• Ultimately, testers had time to execute only 50% of the available test plan.

The risk of application failures persists as testers are unable to complete testing cycles

The results suggest that many organizations are taking their chances with application quality. This is a perilous approach in today’s business environment. With software increasingly acting as a primary interface to the business, the risks associated with software failure rise dramatically. Switching costs are at an all-time low and choices are at an all-time high. The tolerance for faulty software is low and most likely will become more and more of a litigious issue in years to come. Failure to advance from a state where software is only half-tested prior to its release will inevitably have signifi cant bottom-line implications over time.

Staged environment and test labs are not feasible solutions

Why are so many organizations taking their chances with quality rather than providing unconstrained access to the environments required for effective testing? One key factor could be the exorbitant costs and complexity traditionally associated with today’s test environment.

Attempting to resolve test environment access constraints by building out a staged test environment or virtual test lab can be extraordinarily expensive. In many situations, building such an environment with staged application instances and virtual test labs can be technically impossible—for example, when

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the dependent application is a third-party application, a complex system (like a mainframe) hosted by another division, or an application beyond the “geo-political” boundaries of the group executing the tests. And even when building a “complete” test environment is feasible, confi guring and maintaining all the dependent applications involves a high ongoing operational cost.

Service virtualization reduces the risk of failure—while cutting costs

Service virtualization poses a more effi cient and cost-effective approach to resolving test access constraints in situations where a dependent application is diffi cult to access and/or confi gure for dev/test purposes. Service virtualization provides 24/7 access to the dependent application behavior that is required for development and testing. In addition to eliminating the access constraints that impede testing, it also signifi cantly reduces the CapEx and OpEx associated with establishing, confi guring, and maintaining test environments. Organizations leveraging service virtualization are able to conduct testing earlier, faster, more thoroughly, and more accurately—signifi cantly reducing the risk of application failure.

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