Service virtualization is a great way to test software. We have been using this methodology for more than a decade now, when the term “Service virtualization” didn’t even exist. Back then it was called “Data Simulation”.
There are two prominent products in this space:
- Lisa ITKO – commercial product from Computer Associates (CA)
- WireMock – Open source solution
Here is my thoughts on these two products.
| CA Lisa ITKO | WireMock | |
| Webservices support HTTP/HTTPS/HTTPS(massl) | Yes | Yes |
| JMS (MQ), JDBC support | Claims to be supported. But even when requested for demo, Vendor didn’t provide it | No |
| GUI – user interface | Good GUI. Easy to organize and structure the test data. | No GUI. Configurations are made on text file |
| Ease of use | It took close to several months for a major financial organization to deploy and see the ROI | In matter of minutes product can be deployed and value is seen right away |
| Deployment Models | 1. On a separate Server 2. Client side deployment model is coming up |
1. On a separate Server (Has a flexibility to deployed on your app server of choice – Tomcat, Jetty, Websphere, Weblogic) 2. Client side deployment 3. Deployment with in app (i.e. same JVM) |
| Integration with Unit testing frameworks | No | Yes. It has strong integration with Unit Testing frameworks |
| Google Trending (please see image below) |
Starting to Decline | Rising. Crossing CA Lisa |
| Industry adoption | Well adopted | Used by industry leaders such as American Express, Intuit… |
| Licensing Model | Very Expensive | Free |
| Support Model | Vendor CA provides | No Vendor support. Only open source community support |
| Business Direction | Founder John Michelsen has sold the product to CA and exited. Most of the time I have seen, after founder/visionarie exits the company, product lacks at it’s innovation. | Wiremock is supported and managed 29 GitHub contributors. It’s having a GitHub star rating of 632 (as of today), which is quite a considerable ranking. |
Fig: Google Trends CA Lisa ITKO, Wiremock
tier1app 
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