Next Pathway Inc., a provider of automated cloud migration technologies, has added key data validation and test automation capabilities to its toolbox.

The new version of Shift Tester, announced today, works by automatically testing what the company says are three core areas that require validation during any cloud migration project, namely data, data quality and extract, transform and load or ETL processes.

Next Pathway is a promising startup selling technology and tools that are meant to help automate some of the key challenges companies face when migrating applications to the cloud. The company’s Shift Migration Suite helps to automate the three key steps of any cloud migration journey. They include planning, by discovering how data flows to and from the app, translating legacy code so it runs in the cloud, and then automating lineage and traceability.

Once a migration project is complete, the next task is to ensure everything runs smoothly and that’s where the Shift Tester tool comes in. As the company explains, it’s powered by a scalable, rules-based data profiling engine that provides visibility into a company’s data and uses artificial intelligence to intelligently suggest which testing rules should be applied. Those tests can then be executed automatically. At the same time, it tests the quality of the data being migrated to ensure it meets the necessary standards.

The data profiling engine makes it possible to perform data testing on even the most complex code types, the company said, such as that found in ETL pipelines and scripting frameworks.

“The final hurdle during any migration project is the testing and optimization phase,” said Next Pathway Chief Executive Chetan Mathur. “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.”

Next Pathway points out that testing and validation accounts for approximately 60% of all difficulties encountered during any cloud migration, with legacy code translation accounting for the rest.

“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%,” Mathur added.

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