RET deploys AOK to help keep Rotterdam on the move

One of Holland’s largest public transport providers uses AOK from ChangeBASE to successfully migrate applications to Windows 7.

London, 8th September 2011 – ChangeBASE, the world leader in application compatibility testing, remediation and conversion today announced that RET, one of Holland’s largest public transport agencies, has deployed AOK to accelerate its migration to Windows 7.

RET provides for the daily transportation needs of over 600,000 people and is responsible for the safe and timely travel of approximately two hundred million people per year. Keeping Rotterdam moving means utilising the very best technology available, so when the Board at RET decided to combine a move to a new headquarters with a hardware refresh and an operating system migration to Windows 7, the project team needed to test, report, fix and deploy over 200 business and safety critical applications all within a five month time frame. The organisation engaged with ChangeBASE through its Dutch partner, PDS, a leading European distributor of application migration tools.

AOK is a modular software suite that enables organisations to test, remediate and convert their application estate for compatibility with Windows 7, 64-bit, Windows Server 2008, Office 2010, Internet Explorer 8 and all major virtual environments. AOK offers dramatic cost and time savings across the entire application testing and packaging process, ensuring high quality and consistent results.

“AOK is so simple, it does exactly what it says it does, quickly and efficiently,” commented Martin Spijkers, Technical System Development Co-ordinator, RET. “And, within tight timescales, AOK delivered. AOK reduced our packaging time by a third on average - AOK goes straight to the issue, fixes it and moves on. With AOK we don’t waste time anymore, we’re winning time.”

“AOK’s immense capability to accurately and quickly test, report and fix applications has really proved itself with the RET project,” commented John Tate, Managing Director of ChangeBASE. “As we approach the end of life for key enterprise operating systems such as XP, the clock is now ticking for organisations to complete their migration to Windows 7. The speed at which AOK can shorten the migration timescale is a positive benefit to every organisation now looking to deploy Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8.”

“Efficiency and speed were the key drivers for the team at RET,” commented Coert Bosker, PDS. “From our experience of working with ChangeBASE and deploying AOK into numerous client sites, we knew that AOK was the only solution that would meet their needs. AOK’s bulk loading, testing, reporting and fixing shortened the repackaging elements of the migration considerably for RET - we’re delighted with how smoothly and efficiently the project went.” RET is now in the final stages of its migration project and AOK has been established as a company standard. “AOK now plays a major part in our repackaging process,” concluded Martin Spijkers. “It’s a standard tool that we use to cut processing time and it provides us with quality assurance in our compatibility requirements.”