# Infosys Whitepaper 
Title: Improve Software Quality and Accelerate Delivery by Adopting Service Virtualization Wisely 
Author: Infosys Limited 
Format: PDF 1.7 

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 VIEW POINT IMPROVE SOFTWARE QUALITY AND  ACCELERATE DELIVERY BY ADOPTING  SERVICE VIRTUALIZATION WISELY -Manoj Aggarwal, Delivery Manager 

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 Context  As business applications moved from  tightly coupled solutions to service-based  distributed architecture, it opened a new  range of business and technical possibilities.  Services-based architecture enables IT  solution providers to expose their business  solutions to consumers in a loosely coupled  on-call consumer / provider model. Within  the organization landscape, it provides  enterprise application teams a mechanism  to deploy reusable business functions as  services for internal consumption.<|endoftext|>Though services have improved the software  delivery process, there are some key lessons  to be learnt. Business applications depend  on SOA based services for critical business  functions. This makes developers and testers  realize that services behavior knowledge  and service availability are the key factors  that will define the success and quality of  the solutions developed by leveraging these  services. To address these dependencies,  developers started ‘mocking and stubbing’  of the service for development and unit  testing. Testing teams depended heavily  on the proactive services environment  blocking to ensure availability of services  and data for testing. Both these approaches  lead to increased effort and timelines for  development and testing. However, with  software development moving to shorter  cycles in Agile and DevOps world and  services becoming increasingly complex,  these service dependencies became a key  obstacle in faster delivery, especially in  situations involving parallel development.<|endoftext|>Drawing from the hardware virtualization  experience, virtualization of services  evolved into an industry standard practice  that allowed both developers and testers  with a realistic approach to handle services  dependencies. Developers managed  to integrate code with the virtualized  services for ‘live like’ code integration in  development environment, enabling these  to test and capture potential code issues  early. Application testers benefited from  the reduced environment and test data  dependency result in faster execution and  effective leveraging of the automated  testing scripts.<|endoftext|>When To Go for Service Virtualization As awareness of the service virtualization and its associated benefits percolated to IT  teams, both providers and consumers of services started to deploy virtualization solutions  at a brisk pace. A fair number of implementations delivered significant business benefits  ranging from 20-30% infra cost reduction, 10-15% reduction in delivery timelines, and  15-20% reduction in defect slippage. A significant majority of virtualization solutions  continued to struggle with justification of investments in the development and  maintenance of these solutions.<|endoftext|>At Infosys, we believe a holistic analysis of the service consumption pattern such as a service  user base, data requirement, and cost of consumption are some parameters that help  decide the best fit for service virtualization solution deployment. One more factor that will  increasingly define virtualization deployment is the software development methodology  followed by IT teams.<|endoftext|>External Document © 2018 Infosys Limited 

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 Service virtualization works best for service  providers in a number of instances. This includes  the following:  •  Services are yet to be developed and consumers need  services for their development / testing to meet rollout  timelines •  Services consumer base is very high and availability of  test data / environment is a challenge • Maintaining live services environment is expensive •  Services behavior is fairly stable and test data / scenarios  can be covered with the limited data set Service virtualization works best for service  consumers in a few instances. This includes the  following: •  Services provider cannot provide services for the  development  /  testing team •  Provider does not provide a live / virtualized service  economically •  Availability of services and data in test environment is a  challenge •  Service that is frequently needed by development  teams due to the volatile nature of the consuming  application It is not recommended for both consumer and provider in the following instances: Services are readily  available and inexpensive  to maintain Services behavior  changes very frequently Services need live data for  testing and development Services have complex  business logic with volatile  test data External Document © 2018 Infosys Limited 

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 Services Identification & Solution  Definition Build & Deploy Maintain Services (Heal Services) Analyze architecture Landscape Virtual Service Design Documentation Continuous improvements and  enhancements to support new  requirements Identify constrained systems Build Virtual Services  Republish new versions and refresh test  data  Formulate high level Strategy  Test Virtual Services to ensure  completeness & correctness Decommission end of life virtualized  services Perform tool fitment analysis Deploy & Publish Virtual Endpoints  Feasibility analysis Service Virtualization Approach Infosys recommends a three-step process for service virtualization as depicted below: Conclusion  Service Virtualization has evolved into a key component of software development lifecycle. Effective deployment of service virtualization  can bring immense benefits with improved quality of the code and faster delivery. However, all services need not to be virtualized and  project teams should plan switch to live services at an appropriate juncture to ensure applications are tested in the ‘LIVE’ environment  and a reasonable balance is maintained between the real and virtual world of services.<|endoftext|>© 2018 Infosys Limited, Bengaluru, India. All Rights Reserved. Infosys believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date; such information is subject to change without notice. Infosys  acknowledges the proprietary rights of other companies to the trademarks, product names and such other intellectual property rights mentioned in this document. Except as expressly permitted, neither this  documentation nor any part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, printing, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the  prior permission of Infosys Limited and/ or any named intellectual property rights holders under this document.  For more information, contact askus@infosys.com Infosys.com | NYSE: INFY Stay Connected   


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