UKLINK consists of critical business areas that record information on the meter points, supply points, invoicing, liabilities, site-works etc. UKLINK application forms a core part of the client's shipper services functionality.

Shipper Services Programme, known, as 'Network Code' is a bespoke application developed over a period of five years using Oracle, Cool:Gen on Unix platform. Various customer requirements and OFGEM regulations forced the application to change regularly. Recent deregulation in the UK Energy industry required considerable change to this application by 2002. This was also in line with the end of product support terms by Oracle, Sterling & HP on their current version of products. Moreover the servers were distributed across the geographic locations in UK, and their maintenance was posing a serious problem. The performance and maintainability of the application was also a bottleneck. The UK Link Consolidation project was envisaged to address the above stated issues.

The client went ahead with the Consolidation Programme and requested Wipro along with Oracle, HP and Sterling to do the analysis. Wipro was involved in the areas of Cool:Gen and Oracle to do the application analysis. The prime objectives of the project were to ensure the performance level of the application after consolidation; the Wipro team got involved in Proof of Concept (POC) activities. Wipro was involved in doing a detailed impact analysis of the consolidation project over the other ongoing projects. Due to the sheer size and complexity of the project, Wipro suggested a phased consolidation approach, which was accepted by the client. In addition the Wipro team also participated in the requirements capturing, sizing and estimates, analysis and design, development and unit testing, integration and system testing, user acceptance testing support and initial post implementation support.

The scope was to replace HP N class servers to V class servers with HPUX 10 to HPUX 11, Oracle 7.3.4 to Oracle 8i, Cool:GEN 4.1 to 5.1 and changing the distributed database architecture to Oracle parallel server architecture. Some of the critical functions that were executed include, Inventory verification, Analysis, Design and Conversion, Being in sync with other parallel development projects (like RGTA etc) that might have an impact on the Consolidation Project during the conversion, deriving an exhaustive testing methodology. Exhaustive system / regression testing was carried out to ensure that all the critical paths in the respective business areas gave the similar results as they used to do in the production. The environments for testing were built with production data so that result matching was simpler.

The main benefits to the client were:

• Significant reduction in project cost
• Significant Performance boost
• Upgrade to the latest technology infrastructure, helped in receiving support from vendors
• Easy manageability of the application
• Creation of a comprehensive Business testing suite
• Execution of various innovative testing strategies to meet the system performance.
• Preparation of reusable regression/system test suites for various business processes.
• Thorough Inventory analysis and Purge