CASE STUDY: Enterprise service virtualization in South African bank

CONTENTS

Summary │ Delivering for Client │ Client Implementation

Background

A South African bank had a large number of legacy systems that were no longer fit for purpose. The bank wanted to migrate these to its core SAP platform to streamline its architecture and consolidate its infrastructure. It also needed to speed up its project deliveries without affecting project cost.

The bank planned to accelerate delivery of the legacy migration as well as its standard SAP projects by removing the various dependencies. It also wanted to transform its test environments to facilitate more efficient testing throughout the project lifecycle.

Summary

More than 300 developers enabled for Dev testing
The number of test environments reduced from six to four
90% reduction in time wasted due to dependencies

Delivering for the Client

The solution

Sandhata analysed the system landscape and used its industry-leading service virtualization skills to design and deliver virtual services to solve the dependency challenges and provide maximum business value. By building an on-site Service Virtualization Centre of Excellence, Sandhata was able to incorporate an integrated process framework. This enabled the client to industrialise the rollout of Service Virtualization across the enterprise and generate high ROI.

The virtual services that were delivered resulted in:

More thorough development testing capability due to fewer dependency blockers. This meant that better quality testing could be performed early in the delivery lifecycle resulting in fewer bugs progressing to higher
environments
Successful utilisation of non-integrated environments including the bank’s complex SAP portfolio
A standard service virtualization approach that could be implemented across portfolios. This ensured consistency across the enterprise and low total cost of ownership

The result

The new virtual services facilitated the legacy migration by allowing testing to be performed effectively. Test environments were consolidated as the virtual services removed the need for redundant environments. This greatly reduced the operating and maintenance overhead required to deliver projects.

The removal of the third-party and legacy dependencies has slashed the total operation and infrastructure costs per project. It also means that projects are delivered more quickly because the test environments can be used more effectively to test early in the lifecycle.

The Service Virtualization Centre of Excellence and operating model now in place will drive continuing cost savings as adoption of service virtualization increases across the enterprise.

The team

The Sandhata delivery team worked closely with the bank’s project team to identify the testing bottlenecks and deliver virtual services to overcome these.
Sandhata also built the Centre of Excellence and trained the COE team, imparting industry best practice knowledge and experience. The client can now benefit from the sustainable service virtualization capability, which has left them independent and self-sufficient.