Explaining Test Data Management in 5 Minutes [Includes Perforce Delphix Demo]

Overview: Test Data Management Explained

This video explains what test data management is, why it matters, and how Delphix streamlines the process. It outlines the common challenges teams face, such as delays in accessing fresh, secure test data and the complexity of maintaining compliance. The demonstration shows how Delphix automates the delivery of reliable, masked data to development and test environments quickly and securely.

Key takeaways:

• Accelerate delivery: Provision test data up to 100x faster for rapid releases.
• Strengthen data security: Mask sensitive information and ensure regulatory compliance.
• Reduce costs: Cut non-production database storage by up to 70%.
• Enable self-service: Empower teams to refresh, rewind, or branch test data on demand.

Watch the video above to see how Delphix simplifies test data management. Want to see it for yourself? Request a no-pressure demo to learn more.

Demo Delphix for Test Data Management

Full Transcript

Hello, everyone. I'm Vikram Kulkarni. I'm the Senior Director for Solutions Engineering at Delphix. Today, we are going to be talking about test data management, what it is, the challenges around it, how Delphix solves these challenges, and the benefits you get by using Delphix for test data management.

Now, what is test data?

It is the right data that is needed for test execution. Modern development teams are racing to deliver innovation faster than ever, and data is key to it. But there is a problem.

Testing teams struggle to provision fresh and precise test data. Without complete and compliant data, test coverage suffers, defects slip through, and releases slow down.

The solution is to use software for test data management because it automates the delivery of test data directly into lower environments exactly when and where teams need it.

When integrated seamlessly into DevOps pipelines, it ensures every test cycle — be it manual or automated — runs with accurate, current, and compliant data.

What are the challenges around test data management?

What is required is fresh, precise, and protected test data. The first challenge is sourcing test data.

Enterprise data is fragmented across legacy systems like mainframes and SAP. Sometimes it is in the cloud and sometimes in distributed platforms.

Procuring and distributing this data consumes a lot of time, which forces developers and testers to wait instead of building and validating software.

The second challenge is protecting sensitive data. There are strict regulations such as CCPA, HIPAA, GDPR, and DORA that require sensitive data be masked before it is delivered into test environments.

Discovering and de-identifying this data while maintaining referential integrity is complex, labor-intensive, and prone to delays.

The third challenge is operating at scale. Test data is iterative. Each bug fix requires fresh validation, which means you may have to roll back data, reserve the data, or refresh test data but not disrupt any test cycle.

Teams need this agility to manage test data dynamically across multiple environments. The last challenge is infrastructure costs. Traditional test data management drives up storage and server expenses as teams create and maintain multiple full-sized environments.

Organizations must find a way to reduce storage footprint and optimize infrastructure usage, but still scale test environments on demand.

The legacy way of delivering test data is to back up production data, restore it, create servers, and allocate storage. A lot of people have to come together to make this happen, which means it might take days, weeks, or months to deliver test data.

With Delphix, it is a one-step, self-service option. It eliminates the process of copying and moving data across systems so you can provision test data within minutes.

How does Delphix work? First, once the platform is stood up, it connects with data sources, and it syncs and creates data timelines inside the platform.

Once that is done, the data masking aspect of Delphix helps you discover the sensitive data and assign algorithms to mask and change the real data into something fictitious, which can still be used by applications and testing teams.

Then, the data virtualization aspect of the platform helps you distribute this data in the form of fast, agile copies, which are referred to as virtual databases.

This is where the self-service options kick in, where you get refresh, rewind, bookmark, and branching options that do not exist in the physical world.

Here are some ROI numbers that you get with Delphix. Typically, there is over a 400% return on investment across all our Delphix deployments. Delphix pays for itself, typically, in a six-month payback period, and 77% of the data is masked or protected with Delphix.

What are the benefits that we can look at in one go? We have solved the challenge. We deliver test data that is fresh, precise, and protected every time. Organizations see an accelerated time to market because we deliver 100x faster data, which fuels quicker releases and continuous innovation.

There is enhanced data security. You can automatically discover and protect sensitive data. Delphix masking reduces exposure to breaches while ensuring compliance with global regulations.

All this happens while we preserve referential integrity across datasets. Lastly, there is tremendous cost efficiency. You shrink your non-production database storage by up to 70% with Delphix's data compression and space-efficient virtualization.

Thank you.