Public University engages DevOps1 to advise and implement their service virtualisation strategy

Overview

In 2023, a prominent university engaged the services of DevOps1, a company renowned for its extensive expertise in modern engineering practices to devise a strategic solution aimed at streamlining the delivery cycle in a highly integrated environment. The envisioned outcome was to effectively virtualise these integrations, thereby optimising the availability of test environments for dedicated teams to conduct efficient testing. The primary goal of this collaborative initiative was to expedite software development and delivery processes, aligning with the university's commitment to innovation and excellence in its technological endeavours.

Challenges

The pace of software delivery at the University was constrained by the availability of integrated test environments. Specifically, integration issues with systems such as Salesforce and Adobe are often the cause of the non-availability of the integrated test environments. This resulted in delays in project deliveries.

The University was trying to accelerate the delivery cycle for changes to their systems, but due to the highly integrated nature of their systems, they were unable to do so. The University was looking for a solution to remove the dependency on the availability of low change systems in integrated test environment(s).

Solution

DevOps1 partnered with SmartBear Solutions to provided a modern solution to this common problem, the implementation of service virtualisation to mimic interface responses from Salesforce, thereby removing the dependency on the availability of Salesforce in integrated test environment(s).

The approach was broken down to:

• Discovery and MVP
• Roadmap and prioritisation
• Implementation and extensibility

During the discovery and MVP(minimum viable product) stage, DevOps1 worked with the University to understand the current state of the integration landscape and the challenges faced by the University. A tools selection, infrastructure setup and MVP were carried out to ensure the solution was fit for purpose.

Once the foundational work was completed, DevOps1 worked with the University to develop a roadmap and strategy for their virtualisation service. This included the identification of the most critical interfaces to be virtualised and the prioritisation of the interfaces based on the business value.

Conclusion

The collaborative effort between the university and DevOps1, supported by SmartBear Solutions, serves as a successful use case for addressing software development and integration challenges.