Service Virtualization is the industrialization, or factory automation, of the old task of creating fakes or "mocks and stubs" of software that responded to requests within software development and test environments. These mocks usually appeared at very early stages of development.
We know mocks are still with us and not completely disappearing any time soon. But they do have an expiration date? At what point does a mock object or a hand-coded stub stop being useful to the overall software delivery lifecycle?
Customers still ask us the question every day, so CA Technologies CTO John Michelsen (and the inventor of Service Virtualization technology during his start-up years at ITKO) recently posted this new video on the ServiceVirtualization.com Video Channel. You can't get this video on basic cable, but you can watch it here:
We hope this helps you make the distinction between the old process of coding and managing mocks or stubs, versus getting the more consistent productivity, stateful behavior and performance characteristics of virtual services. This is a fine time for letting go of mocks and stubs in the SDLC (software development lifecycle). As it turns out, it is never too soon to switch over to more robust Service Virtualization capabilities.
Want to talk about this or hear from more experts on the topic? Join the conversation and comment on this video or visit the discussion board of development and test professionals and IT executives on http://servicevirtualization.com/.