Next Pathway streamlines cloud migration with new testing capabilities

Next Pathway has announced its next version of SHIFT Tester, engineered with enhanced data validation and test automation capabilities.

The Software-as-a-Service solution automatically tests the three core areas that require validation as part of any cloud migration project: data, data quality and ETLs (extract, transform, load).

SHIFT Tester accelerates a large portion of the migration work dedicated to testing, the company states.

For companies migrating their data to the cloud, the lion's share of testing performed including developing and executing test cases and debugging any problems is still accomplished manually, with many either offshoring the work or applying teams of developers and scores of testing engineers, according to Next Pathway.

Recognising this, SHIFT Tester is designed to automate and significantly improve the quality and quantity of data testing.

The SHIFT Tester solution is powered by a scalable, rules-based data profiling engine that provides greater visibility into data to automatically and intelligently suggest which testing rules to apply - and then automates the execution of those tests.

It also tests the quality of the data that is being migrated to the target system to ensure the data quality meets a high standard.

Ultimately, according to the company the SHIFT Migration Suite was launched to solve the core steps of cloud migration through automation, including end to end planning and scoping of legacy data sources, and code translation of various complex code types contained within legacy applications.

With the latest version of SHIFT Tester, it also solves the complex challenges associated with workload testing and optimisation.

Next Pathway CEO Chetan Mathur says, "The final hurdle during any migration project is the testing and optimisation phase.

"This next version of SHIFT Tester ensures that the full testing lifecycle is much faster and provides greater test coverage, which ultimately delivers a higher quality result.

"SHIFT Tester is another proof point of our continuing commitment to innovate and invest in automated technologies that make it easier for our clients to migrate to the cloud.

During a migration project, legacy code translation accounts for 35-40% of the difficulties encountered, while testing and validation challenges account for approximately 60%.

Mathur adds, "By automatically producing the test cases and then executing those test cases, this next generation of SHIFT Tester reduces data validation and test timelines by as much as 70%."

SHIFT Tester's data profiling engine allows Next Pathway to perform data testing on complex code types, such as those found in ETL pipelines and scripting frameworks.

Next Pathway automates the end-to-end challenges when customers are migrating complex on-premise applications to the cloud.

SHIFT Tester expands on that strategy by applying automation to what is considered the most important and time-consuming part of any migration effort - testing and optimisation.