Did you hear about yesterday's "Government Alert" test message broadcasted to Verizon mobile subscribers in New Jersey and other Eastern US states? The message said:
"CMAS Alert - Civil Emergency in this area until 1:24 PM EST Take Shelter Now U.S. Govern." (story in NJ.com)
Thousands of panicked callers immediately flooded 911 lines wondering what went wrong, and where the "Take Shelter" should happen. State Police and the NJ branch of Department of Homeland Security were on the case. As it turns out, the company apologized later that the message was just a test the carrier was running to verify their participation in the government's CMAS, or Commercial Mobile Alert System.
Events like this are a ringing endorsement for the practice of Service Virtualization - coupled with a solution like LISA that could have been used to simulate the back-end systems, the message relay, or any number of end-user phones receiving the message -- so Verizon could complete their development and test cycles. Outside of the constraints of limited access time to live systems, and the high costs of securing or replicating solid test infrastructure and data, there is a brimming risk factor for end customers.
Testing your software against (or anywhere near) the live system is inherently volatile and risky. One wrong destination address left in the code, one unauthorized data change executed by developers, can generate very troublesome results indeed. The ability to message everyone with an alert only works if we can be assured that the message is real. We hope these teams make the call to decouple themselves from live systems and customers, and immediately start testing them in a virtual service environment.
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