Testing Without Constraints: Service Virtualization

While today's distributed software architectures such as SOA, Software-as-a-Service, and Cloud Computing offer organizations increased agility and new reuse opportunities, they also increase the risk of costly software problems due to constant change and increasing complexity. System testing is constrained by dependency on critical services, systems, and data that may be unavailable or too costly to use. A new approach, Service Virtualization (SV), allows test teams to create “virtual worlds” that emulate software behavior and model functional, data, and performance characteristics in the target production environment. Testers can capture, model, and configure target environments while decreasing their need to access production systems and costly "pay as you go" services. With Service Virtualization, testing teams become decoupled from constraints in the lifecycle, with drastically reduced support, data maintenance, and access costs.