One of the major problems of software industry is its inability to develop error free software. Approximately 40–50 % of SDLC cost is spent on software testing. When applications need to be developed rapidly with changing user demands, this expenditure takes a significant value. Software testing is very important but is an effort consuming activity. Large numbers of test cases are possible and some of them may make software fail. Therefore there is a need to automate the existing manual approach to minimize the test case execution time and further optimize test cases. In this paper a keyword oriented data driven hybrid framework—HTLP (hybrid test language processing) been proposed for automatic test case execution and optimization. The HTLP is applied to an open source software based application-Vtiger CRM5. The proposed framework is compared with manual testing approach for test case execution and optimization. Based on experimental results it is concluded that (1) with iterative regression cycles the HTLP testing time is significantly very low as compared to manual testing approach and (2) a high level of test suite optimization (83.78 %) is achieved using the proposed framework.