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All things working together: ATM systems testing for Windows 7 migration

Webinar stresses the importance of advanced testing in rolling out an updated OS that works as expected.

May 28, 2014 by Suzanne Cluckey — Owner, Suzanne Cluckey Communications

One of the most important — and least often discussed — aspects of the ATM migration from Windows XP to Windows 7 might be testing. And even when the topic does come up, the conversation seems to revolve around PCI compliance.

But what about the testing needed simply to ensure that hardware, hosts, drivers and program upgrades and other parts and pieces that make up an ATM network will all play nicely together in a Windows 7 sandbox?

This was the question addressed in the Tuesday, May 27 webinar, “How the ATM Industry Can Master Change and Manage External Influences,” hosted by ATM Marketplace and presented by Brussels-based global payments and testing technology specialist Clear2Pay.

The one-hour event began with a review by presenter and Clear2Pay product manager Colin Fraser of challenges involved in Windows 7 migration, including:

platform decisions;
hardware capabilities;
installation issues;
driver availability;
enforced upgrades by ATM providers and other vendors; and
upgrades to monitoring, software distribution and advertising applications.

“All of these obviously interact with each other and all add up to a significant number of combinations that need to be thoroughly tested in order to have confidence that what you’re rolling out on the street is really going to behave as you expect it to,” Fraser said.

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However, he added, “change is not always a negative.”

Fraser said that enforced migration can bring with it some welcome positives, such as the ability to support new functionalities that customers want, and the opportunity to take advantage of newer, more powerful software solutions.

Additionally, he said, it's a good opportunity for ATM deployers to take stock and find areas where they can add new value. And one of those areas is testing.

“Because organizations are going to have to make a significant investment in testing, and [invest] a significant amount of effort spent on regression testing to identify that the behavior of the system is as expected, it’s an ideal opportunity to look at … adding test automation into the mix and see what that can add into your processes.”

Automating the testing process introduces new efficiencies, Fraser said. These include the opportunity to foster best practices, to reduce duplication of effort, to make test cycles faster and more repeatable and to expand teams available to do testing at the ATM.

Operators who deploy test automation along with Windows 7 can fulfill a number of objectives at once, Fraser said. Among these is the ability to test cards and achieve card scheme certification — a process that takes on special importance for ATM operators who decide to implement EMV in tandem with their OS upgrade. They can also ensure that their authorization and terminal management host systems have not been affected by the OS upgrade, and that other software solutions on ATMs can be upgraded or recovered.

But establishing a testing methodology is more than just a one-time Windows migration project, Fraser said. “You start to look at how you can add value to the business in the long term — how can you use QA and testing efforts to actually drive innovation in the future?”

Not surprisingly a “test-driven approach” begins with identifying business goals. Following are several other steps, which Fraser outlined for the audience, all culminating in the end goal — executing the test itself.

But the process doesn’t end here, necessarily. The ability to develop test suites and reuse them in the future can be a way of adding value to the process.

“Often QA can be seen as throwaway; you execute it once, you maybe draft in a number of outsourced testers for a particular cycle; you complete that and you’re done. Then a month down the line you have to do the same process again. So that’s where we see that automation really … allows you innovate as a business, by freeing you up to look at other areas, whether that is using your existing test group to delve into more complex areas — perhaps performance testing."

It might not be possible to automate every aspect of testing, but by automating a significant portion of it, a deployer might find the time to focus on more challenging projects — areas that often go unexplored when the focus is on “bread and butter” scenarios, Fraser said.

The webinar detailed other benefits of test automation, as well. Among these, the ability to virtualize the process so that test teams and machines don’t have to be co-located (or even on the same continent), and the ability to combine test solutions to create end-to-end, integrated solutions.

Above all, Fraser said, it was most important for deployers not to underestimate the amount of testing required to ensure that a system would operate as intended.

“There’s no doubt that QA is the most common part of any project to get squeezed, but in this kind of migration project, it really is the key factor in delivering a quality solution to the street, to the end users that will result in the maximum benefit for the business.”

The webinar will be available for free online replay through the next 12 months. Listeners are encouraged to share the link with others who might not have been able to attend the live session.

photo: kevin utting

About Suzanne Cluckey

Suzanne’s editorial career has spanned three decades and encompassed all B2B and B2C communications formats. Her award-winning work has appeared in trade and consumer media in the United States and internationally.