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Test data is one of the most significant components in any testing process. In fact, in many testing efforts, the creation and maintenance of test data consumes a large percentage of time. This means that test data represents a big investment to any organization, and therefore every business wants to make the most of this investment. However, improper management of test data can turn out to be devastating for a business. It can lead to test inefficiency causing longer testing cycles and increased costs. It also increases business risk due to the unreliability of test results brought forth by improper test data. This is why it is important to remember the significance of test data and employ best practices for its efficient management. Good test data is that which exactly represents the complete range of production data, and is appropriately sized to suit the organization’s testing needs. So how can organizations ensure that their test data meets these requirements? Firstly, businesses need to understand their test data, and classify it for the purpose of managing it efficiently. Secondly, they need to identify the data sources across platforms and applications. Thirdly, the selection criteria for test data have to be determined by defining the requirements clearly. Once the data has been identified, organizations should employ best practices and device efficient means to organize and manage test data in a seamless manner. This is exactly what a test data management solution like IBM Optim is designed to do. IBM Optim test data management solution streamlines the data management process to meet the development and testing requirements of organizations. It comes with comprehensive test data management capabilities that help create ‘right-sized’, functionalized databases that reflect business processes accurately. This helps in eliminating expensive cloning processes and correct defects in the early development stages. This solution is scalable across applications, databases, operating systems and hardware platforms, and helps secure test environments, improve test quality, and accelerate release cycles. Moreover, it offers additional benefits such as reduction in costs by automating the creation of ‘right sized’ test data to bring down the size of test environments, and reduction in business risk as sensitive information is masked in order to ensure protection and compliance. The latest version of this test data management solution, i.e. IBM Optim 7.2 comes with further enhancements such as support for many more operating systems and databases, and improvements in data extract and convert processes. In addition to this, the Optim Designer allows organizations to define data models, data privacy policies, and Optim interoperability request models. Optim test data management solution thus helps organizations embrace a new era of computing by providing ample support for testing in the cloud and big data systems. Read more about- IBM Optim Data Privacy
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