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BTL Case Study

BTL is a leading, UK-owned, e-Assessment development and delivery company. With over 1 million certified exams powered by BTL, BTL’s content development and delivery tools are helping some of the UK's largest agencies face the challenge of onscreen delivery.

BTL’s e-Assessment clients’ include: AAT, AQA, CIE, City & Guilds, EAL, SQA, Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) and WJEC.

 

Challenge

BTL’s Surpass Suite is a set of powerful, highly secure, flexible and easy-to-use e-Assessment development and delivery tools.

The suite is able to deliver huge volumes of onscreen assessments in areas as diverse as Teacher Training, Key and Basic Skills, GCSE’s, A levels, and a number of professional qualifications.

The Surpass Suite includes:

  • ContentProducer – an award-winning tool for authoring content
  • ItemBank – a robust, leading edge, question banking tool
  • SecureAssess – a Web 2.0 secure onscreen delivery platform

The Surpass Suite plays a critical part in e-Assessment delivery, meaning the resilience and continuity of the software is of paramount importance.

 

Solution

BTL has long since recognised that providing business continuity for its customers should be a priority. Since Autumn 2009, it has worked with independent escrow provider, NCC Group, to begin offering optional escrow protection to its customers, through a multi-licensee agreement. 

NCC Group’s software escrow solutions are a smart, simple way of managing risk and demonstrating good corporate governance.

Under the terms of its software escrow agreement, NCC Group holds a copy of BTL’s software source code, which its clients depend upon but do not own or have access to under the terms of their license agreement.

By entering into the software escrow agreement, BTL is ensuring its customers have the right to access the source code for its software in the unlikely event that it was no longer able to support or maintain them.

If such a situation was to occur, customers registered to the agreement can apply for the material to be released quickly and safely, minimising disruption and cost, so that it can be maintained and rebuilt by another third party.

Due to the nature of the software in question, NCC Group and BTL also recommend that as well as ensuring that the source code is stored and regularly updated, licensees should commission full Verification Testing of the application to ensure that the source code deposited could be built into the working system if needed.

NCC Group’s range of full Verification services are specifically designed to remove any uncertainty of what is held in escrow and test the accessibility and completeness of the material.

The Verification process gives both end users and suppliers complete peace of mind. Initially the Verification Consultant worked with the supplier through a complete build of the source code and then worked with the license team to test that the correct application was created.

The entire process was detailed in a comprehensive report, which both the licensee and BTL can then use as a step-by-step manual to build the source code into the working application.

 

Results

NCC Group’s Verification solutions give great benefit to both end-users and suppliers alike.

End users use Verification services to ensure that, in the event that they need to take over maintenance of the source code, it can be reconstituted to a working system quickly and effectively.

Software suppliers use Verification services to reassure their customers of their integrity and commitment to best practice.

Jon Leigh, Director of Escrow Solutions, NCC Group, commented: “The principle behind our software escrow offering is clear – to protect all parties involved in the development of critical software and applications.
BTL played a key role in verifying the system, contributing and participating in the verification process and have definitely reaped the benefits.

Benefits to BTL include:

  • The ability to test their own build procedures
  • The provision of confidential reporting on matters of security and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) issues that are found within their code
  • The advantage of using their commitment to verification as a key differentiator in their marketplace

Steve Clark, Service Delivery Manager at BTL commented: "Having an independent party protecting and verifying our software is incredibly useful for us. Not only does it set us apart from our competitors, it also means we have an independent, comprehensive audit and report of our build process, enabling us to constantly make improvements.”

“Added to that, our dedicated NCC Group account manager makes arranging cover and testing very straightforward, they take care of everything, meaning that we can just concentrate on our clients."