The Business Case for Synthetic Test Data Automation

If you’re familiar with GenRocket’s Test Data Automation (TDA) platform, then you already know it represents a paradigm shift for how test data is provisioned and utilized for testing. In this edition of the GenRocket Advisor, we’d like to share the business case for GenRocket’s TDA solution and how it represents the industry’s highest ROI for any test data platform.

The future of Test Data Management is moving from masked production copies towards synthetically generated test data. This move is being led by GenRocket who has spent more than a decade developing a modern TDM platform with market-leading synthetic data generation and on-demand delivery of masked test data subsets.

Modern Test Data Management requires that test data be secure but so much more is needed for quality engineering organizations to truly “Shift Left”. Large enterprises need a single platform that can deliver any volume, variety, and format of test data, mapped directly to test cases as part of a CI/CD pipeline that is delivered through a distributed self-service model.

Traditional TDM / Gold Copy approaches for test data have many drawbacks:

• The test data only meets 20-30% of requirements for volume, variety, and formats so organizations have to also manually create test data (spreadsheets, scripts, batch runs)
• Test data reservation is required because there isn’t enough test data for different testing teams
• Test data storage is expensive (all those terabytes of Gold Copy data)
• Test data goes “stale” quickly and refresh cycles for Gold Copy data in regulated businesses can take days to weeks
• Test data is not easily mapped into a test case as part of a CI/CD pipeline
• Test data use isn’t easily tracked so test data CoE teams lack visibility into ROI

In contrast, GenRocket’s approach for test data automation has many advantages:

• Test data meets close to 100% of test data requirements with no manual data creation
• Test data does not need to be reserved; all testing teams get as much data volume and variety as they need
• Test data does not have to be stored; it is delivered “on demand” in seconds to minutes
• Test data does not go stale because it is dynamically updated, always accurate and always “fresh”
• Test data is mapped directly into a test case, called by the test script as part of a CI/CD pipeline
• Test data use is automatically tracked so test data CoE teams have full visibility into ROI

GenRocket is uniquely positioned to lead the way forward with your organization for the following reasons:

• A single platform to meet all enterprise-class test data requirements – no more manual data creation in spreadsheets, scripts, or batch file processing
• Patented, market-leading synthetic test data. As the use of synthetic test data is better understood, there is no vendor better positioned to enable your organization with all the advantages of choosing the market-leader in synthetic test data generation
• Ability to offer masked subsets of test data to meet the current demands of testing teams. With many additional benefits over traditional TDM tools:
• Test Data subsets do not have to be stored as data is delivered “on demand”
• Test Data subsets are delivered in seconds
• Test Data subsets can be mapped into test cases and called by test scripts as part of a CI/CD pipeline
• Test Data subset use can be tracked to help show patterns of use and ROI
• Component-based architecture that allows new test data platform functionality to be added very quickly so that your organization is able to benefit from industry advances in technology without skipping a beat

We’ve developed a business case that fully explains the value of TDA in some ways that may be familiar and in other ways you may not realize. Find out by reading the article and/or downloading the brochure.