John Lewis saves weeks in software testing for Windows 7 migration

Department store to grocery retailer John Lewis Partnership (JLP) has deployed a software testing application from Quest to help it migrate to Windows 7.

The retailer will be migrating more than 1,000 business critical applications to the Microsoft OS by 2014, away from XP for which the software giant is ceasing to provide support.

The Quest Workspace ChangeBASE application compatibility testing and remediation software is being used to test JLP’s business applications so that they are compatible with Windows 7.

According to the vendor, JLP has managed to cut this process from 400 working days to under one week.

In a statement, Matthew Cutts, client systems group leader at John Lewis said: “We have a responsibility to the business to migrate our client estate to Windows 7 by April 2014."

"[This application] has not only allowed us to make a significant head-start but also meant that we have been able to contain costs and keep to schedule by automating a large bulk of the work," he said. "[It] has taken the guesswork out of the project, provided visibility of the unknowns, and has given us confidence that we will deliver for our business users.”