LogiGear

18FeatureService Virtualization Rises to Cloud AppTesting ChallengeService virtualization provides a way to get around that scale issue that is not only practical,but more importantly should lead to better code being deployed the first time every time.By Michael Vizard, IT Business EdgeOne of the challenges with building an applicationthese days is the number of dependencies thatapplication will actually have on other applications.Ideally in order to know how that application will actuallyperform, application developers would be able to test theirapplication against the application it depends on running inproduction. The odds of that happening, however, are slimto none, especially if that other application is running as acloud service that has to be always available to end users.To solve this problem developers are increasingly turning toservice virtualization, which is an emerging set of applicationtesting technologies that allows a developer to create areplica of another application in a testing environment. Infact, a recent survey of 200 in‐house software developmentexecutives and managers from enterprises with revenues ofmore than US $1 billion dollars in North America ‐ the majority(71%) with over $2 billion annual revenues – conductedby the market research firm Coleman Parkes Researchon behalf of CA Technologies, found that not only does theinability to adequately test applications result in misseddeadlines, entire functions wind up being eliminated andthe development team as whole lacks confidence that theapplication will work as advertised.Given the often limited scope of most application testingthat may not be all that surprising. In fact, interest in agiledevelopment methodologies aside, as the amount of liabilityattached to an application increases the more cautious anorganization becomes. What’s definitely needed, saysShridhar Mittal, general manager for service virtualization atCA Technologies, is a new approach to testing applicationsthat for the most part are mashups of any number of existingapplications that often have dramatically different servicecharacteristics. The challenge, of course, is figuring whichone of those applications might adversely affect the performanceof your application before your application discoversthat issue in a production environment, says Mittal.Otherwise, says Mittal, all any organization is doing is releasingcode on a little more than hope and a prayer that itwill actually work.As applications become increasingly borderless thanksmainly due to the proliferation of APIs that serve to makeapplications more accessible, the more tempting it becomesto invoke third-party APIs. But as we all know, thequality of APIs tends to vary widely across the Web. Rightnow many organizations are using agile development methodologiesthat in many instances amount to little more thantrial and error when it comes to invoking APIs.As the number of application releases and updates thatorganization are rolling out in a given year steadily increasesit’s pretty clear that existing approaches to testing applicationswon’t scale in the age of the cloud. Service virtualizationprovides a way to get around that scale issue that isnot only practical, but more importantly should lead to bettercode being deployed the first time every time. ■Originally published on ProgrammableWeb(programmableweb.com)About MichaelMichael is the Editor in Chief of InfoWorldMedia Group where he has beencovering computer technology for morethan 14 years. He is also a member ofthe senior leadership team, which providesthe strategic vision for InfoWorldMedia Group.W W W . L O G I G E A R M A G A Z I N E . C O M F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 3 ǀ V O L V I I ǀ I S S U E 1