Broadcom Service Virtualization Reviews

The ability for us to be able to record the live transactions, and create a virtual services out of that, as well as be able to actually use the request and response to create new virtual services for the back-ends that we don't have access to. We have a bunch of use cases there from that perspective.

With the radio's hardware costs allow the development team to what they call shift left, and start to develop their code against the other back-end services that we may not have available in time. These are pretty much the benefits there that we see.

I would like to see more integration support with Docker for release automation, a few things on service monitoring that's pretty much provided in the prior version of the product. I would like to see that a little bit more usable in the future.

It's really good. We use it to support performance testing as well. That can scale up to tens of thousands of users concurrently.

It's great. Basically, it's designed so that we have a load balancing virtual service environment, so we can scale it up as much as we need to.

That's pretty much the key thing I like about CA compared to other vendors I work with. Their support is great. We have an account manager that's really helpful. He helps us kind of navigate through a different escalation path as well after we open the ticket. We never felt like we were left hanging when we run into any issues with the product.

I think it's a little more technically involved to get it started, but once you get the hang of it you can pretty much do even internal knowledge transfer to any other team. We rely on CA-provided training to a really small group of our team, and then after that we first do our internal training and knowledge transfer to other teams to scale it up.

We quantify what kind of benefits that we have against the cost that we have to pay on the solution. It turns out to be a really good exercise there. It forces us to do the ROI on the technology product that we buy against the benefits that we reap from the product there.

I would rate it an 8/10. From a capabilities perspective it's there. Like I mentioned, the learning curve can be a little high. Usability in the prior version that we used, version 8.2, usability is not great. That's why I give it an eight. It requires a Thick Client, so we need to install that on the machine. It's not the most intuitive UI ever, so we'd like to see it improved a little bit from that perspective. I know that they're coming out with version 9, which is supposed to improve that quite a lot, so I'll be looking forward to that.

What we start off with is that we had what we called a enter of excellence that comprised of a few very technical individual to try out the platform, to install the software, and be the product expert within the organization. Then what we did is that we pretty much scaled the development of the virtual services to other teams and that have more of a knowledge of how the service is supposed to behave, so that the COE doesn't need to be in all of these type of sessions and what not. We actually used the start out small and then use that team to empower other teams to actually be able to develop their virtual services that way.

CA Service Virtualization has helped us advance the development cycle when third-party interfaces are not available to us. We're able to simulate that activity. Working with the developers, we're able to get our testing site done in advance, so that when the integration starts, we're able to get further down the testing path with our third-party vendors.

We are able to get further testing on a couple of interfaces. We do a lot of third-party request out for a loan; fraud verification; credit bureau. A lot of times, those data setup and data needs take a longer period of time than what maybe we have, so we're able to virtualize both the credit bureaus and some of our fraud facilities to get the testing done.

Also, facilitating in the training environments, where training environments are typically used part time, you don't want necessarily to have all the hardware and software laying around part-time. We're able to virtualize those interfaces.

I'd like to see more of the newer technologies included in there, looking mainly from a mobile perspective, possibly, so you can virtualize some of the aspects that we're going to be doing for mobile testing.

As far as the stability, I've used CA Service Virtualization now for eight years, so it's been pretty stable.

It's able to scale. It's easy to scale CA Service Virtualization because of the way the services can be placed onto a platform. You could have a couple of services running on one server and if you have a high demand, you could put them on another server. You're able to have many services running across the organization. They don't have to be co-located.

I've not used technical support. The ladies and gentlemen who work for me are able to stand up the situation. We did do an engagement with CA and we brought them in probably for about three months in early 2016 to help with some of the more complex virtualizations.

We didn't have a previous solution. I've been with the company about 18 months and came in the early part of 2015. We're fortunate enough to get in with our General Motors ELA and I got the licenses for us to be able to start doing the CA SV setup for 2016.

I wouldn't say initial setup is straightforward. You have to have a little background, engineering knowledge, about how it operates. I know my team accomplished it working with CA in relatively short order.

For the service virtualization, especially, a lot of times, we are asked to stand up environments and those will take time; you have to purchase hardware and software. I think if they start looking to CA SV as a solution, we can stand it up rapidly and usually solve the situation in a short order of time, saving both green dollars and hours of setup, for the particular hardware database, whatever you're trying to setup.

My rating reflects the flexibility that it gives, the easy deployment and the easy maintenance of it. It is probably one of the better tools on the market for virtualization. I've seen several.

It helps us to create service scripts for performing shift-left in our testing.

In the development environment during the early lifecycle, whenever there is a third-party interface that is not available, we use this product to create those steps that help us in getting responses, as and when needed.

It has helped us to shift-left in our testing life cycle.

We do start testing at an early stage in the development environment, even before it gets into QA.

Generally, for our agile development projects, most of the third-party interfaces or interfacing applications which are shared services such as middleware services are not available. This is when we use CA Service Virtualization for early testing. Once we get into the QA environment, we test with real interfaces.

This product provides an interface with current test management tools and that’s what we like about it.

However, we would like to see more interfaces with all open source platforms, especially in the CI/CD framework such as Jenkins, TFS tools.

It is very stable. We've been using it for quite some time.

This product is very scalable.

I have not interacted directly with technical support. We have our own team that is in charge of this aspect.

Previously, we did use HP Service Test and SoapUI software, but we find this solution to be more scalable and stable.

I was not involved in the initial setup process, since we have a setup team that takes care of this.

Not many people know that even in the development space, developers can utilize this solution to perform some of their unit testing, before they get into real interfaces. This awareness is not there in the market. We use this product in performance and functional testing, so probably even in unit testing the developers could use it. Thus, we would strongly recommend to explore this tool and its functionalities.

The most important criteria while choosing a vendor is primarily its performance track record in the market and the range of solutions they provide across lifecycles. Another important aspect is the ability to interface with multiple solutions that are available in the market.

It's the ability to capture and replay traffic that's most valuable to us. We can monitor network traffic while getting data, and a virtual endpoint lets us see what the platform would respond with. We use it to isolate our app from unreliable pieces of the ecosystem, protecting our code from uncertainty.

Isolating the application that we’re testing is the top benefit. Also, it adds the ability to generate predefined responses to data so that we have a complete understanding as to how we’d perform.

So far nothing, it has everything I've needed. Totally everything.

However, it's a pretty heavyweight tool for my personal needs. I like to do stuff on my own and would normally prefer to use my own solution for service virtualization, rather than such a heavyweight, extensive product. In half an afternoon, I could make a few scripts to meet all the needs myself.

I haven't used it for long. We went through training, and have been planning how to use it as our app is still being developed. Training usage was two months.

It seems to be scalable, but we don’t know to what extent. For my testing needs, the solution has been fine, but I’m not sure from an enterprise perspective. I’ve been at Nike for two years and used to be just a Java developer.

I've not had to use them.

We used Charles Proxy and it required much more manual work. This product is much more automatic.

This is what I'm primarily doing. It's been straightforward with no issues.

It was a corporate decision to change. They looked for a solution that most accurately solved the need at hand efficiently. The most direct applicable solution to my needs is the important thing.

Jump in and play around with it, and you'll get it easily.

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.

Virtualizing mainframe systems. Reducing dependency on mainframe capacity and availability, which is a major roadblock for us right now.

The virtualization is primarily performed by eliminating the back end mainframe system. So we can read out our API traffic to the virtualized system. Basically, we don't have to use the mainframe while our service is virtualized.

It helps us with work/life balance. If we didn't have that CA Service Virtualization, we would have to run our performance tests during the night, because that's when the mainframe is least used. For our team members it helps them to maintain a better work/life balance, as they can execute their tests in the daytime so they don't have to spend the weekends and nights doing so.

To us, right now, it is going to be reducing the capacity limitation on mainframe, because we are highly dependent on mainframe capacity which is not easily available to us.

Regarding additional features for future releases, that is something we'll come to know when we start using it at full scale. But so far, we're pretty content with what has been offered.

In terms of improvements, I think a little bit more of use cases from existing clients. That could show that it's a workable solution used with other clients as well.

Stability is pretty good so far. We have used it across our organization in different teams. So the next step for us is to bring it to performance testing.

Scalability is the next factor we have to judge, because this system has to handle a large amount of load, so we'll have to see what the scalability is going to be. But based on the reviews and research, we think it's going to be as per of our expectations.

We have had business partners, account managers, come and do the PoC for us, proof of concept, so we have used their support. 

Support has been great so far. They have come to the table whenever we needed them. They have provided all the support in a timely manner so, so far so good.

We made the move because of a constraint that we have today. It's a constraint with mainframe capacity and availability. This is basically an opportunity for us to remove that constraint and that's why we need Service Virtualization.

We have completed the PoC, so I would say since we haven't completely set it up. So far, whatever the setup has done, we're satisfied with it.

We evaluated other options, I'd say lightly, very lightly, because we have used CA within our company from a while. We know that they are the market leader, we know there are probably not many competitors for the tool that we want to use.

When selecting a vendor what's important to us is 

• a relationship with the vendor
• their response to us in a timely manner and
• especially, their being established, having proven their solution with other clients.

I give it an eight out of 10, based on our experience so far. Once we use it at full scale, we'll come to know if there are any more improvements or challenges that need to be addressed.

I would tell colleagues to keep CA as the number one priority to research because they are the market leader and have the most experience, based on our research. I think they should be one of the top contenders for service virtualization.

The virtualization options in the product: We can now virtualize entire backend systems or chains. That makes test and acceptance environments much more readily available, which offers more testing possibilities that results in better quality.

Our supply chain applications became available for more than 70% of the time compared to 25% before we started using LISA.

I would like to see better GUI testing possibilities.

It only supports web testing by working with Selenium: DevTest is positioned as a test automation tool. People want to use it as that, but then they find out it needs Selenium with all the downsides of that. We also have a couple of client applications they can’t be tested at all with DevTest/Selenium.

Beyond that, you need a lot of ports to be opened to enable working with it. That introduces a lot of problems trying to use it, especially the database connection from the client. A solution would be to add all of the functionality to the webclient.

The full client needs a database connection. That is a problem for us, because that is not allowed anymore.

I have used it for eight years. I started with LISA 5 just for virtualization, which is still the most powerful functionality. We have CA DevTest (LISA) version 8.4 in a semi-production environment. We are currently upgrading to version 9.5 to replace all of these.

You need a lot of servers in advanced datacenters because of security regulations. Opening a lot of ports from a lot of IP addresses to one server is not allowed. Multiple VSEs is the solution, but introduces more installation problems.

Sales and pre-sales support work very good. They are willing to help make more use of the products without wanting to sell more licenses (at least they don’t appear that way).

The support is pretty good. I don’t have direct contact but from our MSP, I get the impression that their questions are handled properly.

I did not previously use a different solution. At the time we started in 2009, this was the only solution.

With version 6, everything needed to be centralized. Now with 9.5, it can be decentralized. It is pretty complex, because it violates all kinds of security regulations at the network datacenter level.

We did this with Systemation, a local company with expert knowledge of LISA/DevTest.

My advice is to work together with the network/datacenter guys from the start.

We didn’t calculate the ROI. We started this to save test environment costs, but we ended up with more testing and better quality.

Pricing/licenses are very expensive, especially performance VSE, which is kind of foolish, especially if you use DevTest as a test driver too. You’ll pay for the vuser bundle and for the VSE.

Set up a central maintenance team, a CoE, but let the users use it themselves. That way, you’ll get more value out of the investment.

The product is easy to use and offers lots of functionalities. This product also supports the most protocols, compared to its competitors.

The most valuable feature for us is that it provides configuration settings to make connections to the DB and web services. Because it has pre-written code exposed through an UI, it makes it much easier to configure tests.

It's helped with our automation testing.

• UI testing could be improved.
• Also, it should have predefined plug-ins to integrate with other automation tools to help in tool-chain enablement.

We've used it for four years.

There were no issues with deployment.

Although the initial products were highly unstable, there is still room for improvement in versions 7.5/8/10.

It's scalable in terms of running a performance test because it supports limited virtual users.

5/10 - The worst thing is the training provided by iTKO/CA as it's very costly and not comprehensive.

7/10

We previously used SoapUI and this is much easier to configure.

The initial setup was straightforward.

ROI typically comes over a longer duration (both Service Virtualization and Release Automation), although its significant in terms of overall project cost when taking into account hardware, testing delays, and third-party dependencies.

It’s very expensive and to really come out with an ROI, it takes years.

We compared it to our existing solution at the time, SoapUI.

It’s a good product, but comes with a hefty cost. If there is a better licensing/cost negotiation, then it can work, otherwise it’s not a viable solution. Some of the in-house products can beat this with limited cost investment.