Grid-Tools, Winners of the 2010 UK IT Achievement of the Year, Announce Its Collaboration with Swansea University

Eynsham, United Kingdom, July 28, 2011 --(PR.com)-- The KESS scheme aims to widen access to postgraduate study and encourage high calibre graduates to work on a range of collaborative research projects with small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) located in the Convergence Region of Wales.

Test data management specialists Grid-Tools, has offices in England, India and USA, as well as Wales and has worked with Computer Science students at Swansea University on a number of projects involving synthetic test data creation and data generation, but the KESS scheme represents a new way to support valuable research that has the potential to be developed into innovative and commercial applications.

Working on software that uses data visualization techniques, Swansea post-graduate James Walker has been awarded the KESS scholarship to study a Master of Research in Visual Computing, supported by Grid-Tools. Grid-Tools director Huw Price, a Swansea University alumni said: "The KESS programme allows researchers to benefit from a better understanding of commercial environments, we welcome the initiative and are pleased that test data created by Grid-Tools will assist James in analysing and building on his findings.”

The scholarship scheme is backed by £33 million of funding from the European Social Fund (ESF) through the Welsh Assembly Government, with further funding provided by Welsh universities and their private sector partners.

Dr Markus Roggenbach of Swansea University’s Computer Science Department commented: “There is a lot of competition from both students and companies to win funding from the KESS scheme. For the students, this scheme offers the unique opportunity to undertake research with a clear link to industrial practice. The strong involvement of a business partner such as Grid-Tools is invaluable as it allows research students to discuss and to test ideas in a real world setting.”

About Grid-Tools:
Grid-Tools is known internationally as the industry leader in data creation, data masking and test data management. Their highly experienced personnel have been writing and developing solutions for large companies in both the private and public sectors for over 30 years.

The Grid-Tools Datamaker suite includes a wide range of technologically advanced tools for test data management. Their signature solution, Datamaker, is a revolutionary tool that creates and publishes quality test data from scratch whilst maintaining the relationships and referential integrity of production environments. Cutting-edge and groundbreaking in nature, Datamaker offers three methods for managing and generating data for testing and development: database subsetting, data masking and data creation. Datamaker also offers end-to-end manageability and enhancement of test data in multiple formats.

The Grid-Tools methodology consists of using a "data-centric" approach to test data management. Their focus is to ensure the quality of the test data you are using is of the right quality for successful testing and development.

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