Service Virtualization – Questions and Answers in SAP Greenfield

Service Virtualization – explained in Questions and Int4 Answers

Service Virtualization, if used correctly, can be a great addition to any SAP S/4HANA Program. The article below dives primarily into its use in SAP Greenfield programs. Although it’s worth mentioning that Greenfield Projects are just one of the beneficiaries of Service Virtualization. Complex Bluefield and Brownfield Programs can also leverage these capabilities.

Despite being used by some of the world’s biggest companies, the concept of SAP Service Virtualization is still foreign to many. We suggest that you treat this as your chance to speed up innovation and deliver value at a pace that can’t be matched by your competitors, while simultaneously assuring the highest quality.

This article is based on an episode of Navigating SAP API Testing show during which Michał Krawczyk dove into a live Q&A session on the subject of Service Virtualization in SAP Greenfield. Watch the full video below:

And if you prefer reading – here’s a text version for you:

What is Service Virtualization – in simplest possible terms?

For the purpose of SAP S/4HANA programs Service Virtualization is an ability to simulate third party systems and EDI/B2B Partners.

What can you simulate with Service Virtualization?

On a very high level – you can simulate all of the third-party / non-SAP systems. All of the systems, transactions, messages or master data transactions can be simulated, along with EDI/B2B partner exchanges. And you can do it on any landscape.

Could you give an example of how that works?

Usually, the use of SAP Service Virtualization in the SAP S/4HANA Greenfield Project will look something like this for an average Int4 Suite customer:

At first – they will get 1 or 2 messages from the third party systems. These messages will be put into the database. And now the company can start simulating.

When the company starts to simulate, the selected message will be sent to the integration platform, processed exactly as if they were sent from the real SAP system and they land in the SAP Greenfield S/4HANA Program.

If needed, the company can change these messages – for example change materials, quantities, add more lines, change partners – and once they do that, they will keep building up their repository of test cases, that anyone else in the team will be able to use.

If you’d like to read a more detailed description, you can read a case study of one of the biggest companies in the world, who used Service Virtualization in their SAP S/4HANA Greenfield Implementation: READ THE SERVICE VIRTUALIZATION CASE STUDY

How are the messages created?

In a Greenfield Program you have two ways of creating messages. You can either:

• ask a third party system to provide you with a reference message and customize it to your needs
• create it manually according to the specifications.

 
It’s important to mention that if you’re using Int4 Suite, every created test case will be stored. It means that you’ll be able to easily repeat it in the future, without the need to go throught the hustle of asking the third parties for a message or creating the test cases again. 

Create it once. Reuse it forever… And by the way – the rest of your SAP team (developers, functional consultants, testing teams) can reuse it as well. Which makes the whole program more effective.  

What challenges does Service Virtualization solve in SAP Greenfield Projects?

There are many challenges that can be solved through the use of Service Virtualization – but let’s scratch the surface a little bit.

Challenge #1 – Lack of non-SAP test landscapes

The first challenge is the lack of non-SAP test landscapes. It’s a very common scenario in SAP transformation programs. 

SAP S/4HANA programs usually have very complex landscapes – consisting for example of development landscape, SIT landscape, QA landscape, pre-production landscape and only then – the real production landscape. Usually between 3 to 6 landscapes that all require the connection to non-SAP testing systems. And we’re usually talking about hundreds of such systems.

So the challenge is not only to connect all of those systems to a single landscape, but also to connect them to all of the landscapes. And very often, these non-SAP system only exist on a single landscape – that is usually called development-test landscape.

With the use of Service Virtualization you can make sure that each landscape gets access to real messages via simulation. Check the video of an in-depth explanation of this capability:

Challenge #2 – Lack of connectivity to the B2B partners

In this case, the B2B partners would be the partners to whose systems you do not have access. For example – EDI partners. 

EDI partners in most cases would be connected to a single system. In most cases – also a test system. But what about the development system? What about the functional tests which you need to do on the SIT system? How are you going to test your complex business process that spans across multiple systems? 

Without Service Virtualization, it’s hard to test them as they would run in reality.

Challenge #3 – The impossible coordination effort

Even if you can connect hundreds of systems to each landscape, there would appear another challenge. For most of those systems, you’d need an external resource – such as staff of external systems that would help you with your testing efforts. But even when you’re trying your hardest – it might not be possible to assure that these resources will be available to you when you need them.

This is exactly what causes a lot of SAP S/4HANA project delays – and we call these “External Dependencies”. See the video below to learn more about their risks:

And what’s more – even if you were going to try to coordinate all those partners – you’d have to do it in a 2 – 6 week timeframe. Which makes it just that much more challenging to perform.

Does Service Virtualization allow you to completely skip coordination with partners?

You can reduce it dramatically. Because you’ll be able to perform over 95% of your testing independently. 

At the end, you’ll probably need to test some of your vanilla flows with the real systems in coordination with partners – but it will be done after everything has already been independently and heavily tested by your SAP team. So there will not be a lot of coordination needed – since you probably won’t need to re-test.

So to sum it up – you cannot eliminate it 100%. But you can reduce it significantly.

And what are the benefits of using SAP Service Virtualization?

To answer this question simply – let’s look at an example from other industry. And let’s look at the aviation industry for a second.

Every pilot needs two types of training: simulation training and aviation. Before a pilot ever gets a chance to fly a real plane, they need to spend countless hours upon hours in the simulator. Where the simulator is trying to mimic the real environment – and where mistakes can be made safely. Only then, once they master the simulator, they can go into aviation training – where they cannot make mistakes anymore.

So why don’t we use the learnings of the aviation industry and apply it to SAP Projects? What could simplify your SAP programs and projects a fair bit.

It’s the same with engines. You wouldn’t put a brand new engine into a plane without testing it first in simulated conditions. 

What capabilities do you gain with the use of Service Virtualization?

With Service Virtualization you can quickly test your business processes in hundreds of variants – which would be near impossible without the ability to simulate the external systems. Because you can test those integrated business processes without involvement of any external resources.

SAP Service Virtualization puts your SAP team back in control of your testing schedule. Because it allows you to independently test your business processes in different variants.

How Service Virtualization allows you to avoid project delays?

In the simplest terms possible – it speeds up the testing. Because your SAP team can simulate all of the message exchanges that would be coming from tens or hundreds of non-SAP systems and B2B/EDI partners – without doing the ping-pong communication of asking external staff for help.

This results in huge reduction in testing time, without cutting the scope. 

Check out our learningSAP course: Avoid SAP S/4HANA Project Delays with Third-Party Systems Service Virtualization

What metrics can you use to measure the benefits of Service Virtualization?

In the business environment, showing the value of a new approach usually boils down to showing the numbers. To give you idea, here’s a simple example:

Measure time needed to test a single business process.

It’s a single measurement with high significance to the success of your transformation project. 

One of Int4 Suite customers measured, that introducing tools such as Service Virtualization allowed his enterprise company’s team shorten the time needed to test a single business process from 29 hours to just 4 minutes. Read the whole story here.

Of course, that’s just one example of what you can measure to showcase the value. In order to truly understand how to measure the benefits of Service Virtualization in SAP, watch the video below, which is a part of Korneliusz Kordus course on creating a business case for Int4 Suite: 

If it’s such a great concept, then what stops companies from using the Service Virtualization?

There are two main reasons:

Number one – you can’t use what you don’t know. Even though some of the biggest SAP S/4HANA programs in the world are using Service Virtualization on a daily basis, the concept itself is still starting to get recognized. With official SAP courses such as “Avoid SAP S/4HANA Project Delays with Third-Party Systems Service Virtualization”, more and more companies are learning about it each month. 

Number two – bad past experience with Service Virtualization solutions that weren’t native to SAP. There are a lot of Service Virtualization solutions that are not suitable for SAP programs because of their complexity. 

And that’s exactly why Int4 Suite is an innovative, SAP-exclusive solution that can be set-up within days – to make your SAP programs easier, and not more complex.

Here’s a quick overview of Int4 Suite and it’s capabilities:

Who is usually responsible for introducing this concept into SAP projects?

The idea of using Service Virtualization can come from all sorts of angles.

Sometimes the concept is introduced by Project or Program Managers, who foresee that testing such a large number of external systems generates risk in the form of External Dependencies.

Other times the concept is brought up by the Testing Teams, who know how much time can be saved through the simulation.

It’s not unusual for the integration teams to introduce this concept, because they realize how complex it is to test and retest thousands of interfaces. 

In what phases of the project is it most beneficial to introduce Service Virtualization?

The sooner, the better. Because the biggest benefits of Service Virtualizations can be harvested in the early stages of the program. 

The whole concept of Service Virtualization is to do it as quickly as possible, before going into further stages of the projects. In this way, you can take advantage of the shift-left approach.

And here’s how you can do it with Int4 Suite:

Aside from simply using it from the earliest stage possible, we often see that Service Virtualization can be extremely useful in the String Integration Testing Phase. Because it’s the phase where we do a lot of functional tests and smoke tests. And Functional Consultants need tens or hundreds of simple messages. And they should not have to go through the whole coordination effort, that was mentioned earlier. With a Service Virtualization solution, they can repeat as many transactions or messages as they need. And they can do it constantly, without depending on anyone else’s schedule.

It’s also important to mention that Service Virtualization is not only the most beneficial in the early stages of the program from the testing point of view. It’s also the most valuable from the business perspective. Here’s how you can calculate it:

Is Service Virtualization a tool for Project Managers or SAP Testers?

The simulation feature will be mostly used by the developers, functional consultants and functional testers. 

Project Managers frequently bring the concept of SAP Service Virtualization into the project, but they usually won’t use it themselves.

Is there data-risk involved in using SAP Service Virtualization?

Of course there’s data risk. That’s why “masking” and “scrambling” are the core components of Int4 Suite – because we work exclusively with enterprise customers that value data safety and data compliance. 

What happens after the project ends?

After the project ends, you’ll likely have a big repository of test cases that you’ve used for the purpose of testing. And the same repository can be used by you in another project or to perform regression testing in the same project. In that way, your hard work won’t go to waste.

What about the reality outside of the single project?

Looking at a big picture – you can innovate faster. 

SAP Customers are not implementing SAP programs just to have something to do. They do it to drive business value. And you need a framework and tools that will allow you to bring those innovations to your system, without having to worry about the quality.

And if you have to test a single change in your SAP system for one month – the pace of your innovation will be slowed along with it.

Are you looking for SAP-native Service Virtualization solution? Introducing Int4 Suite

Int4 Suite is a platform used by some of the biggest companies in the world in their SAP S/4HANA Programs. 

As an SAP-Exclusive software, our only focus is to be as useful as possible in the SAP Programs. 

And with modern testing features such as 3rd Party System Simulation or Automated API Testing, it’s a must-have for programs or projects that involve large numbers of external/non-SAP systems. And the more complex your SAP Environment is – the more beneficial Int4 Suite will be for your enterprise.

If you’d like to learn more about the platform, schedule a demo with us: