Cooperative U - Case study
Cooperative U (formerly known as Système U), is a huge French retailers cooperative, made up of hundreds of independent hypermarkets and supermarkets, which makes it the one of the largest retail group in France. It's entire IT development and management is handled by U Tech (ex U IRIS), making performance testing one of its many responsibilities, in collaboration with SIGMA, a digital solutions provider they work closely with.
In 2022, while a Neoload customer for multiple years, U Tech decided to rethink it's performance strategy and looked for ways to improve its efficiency.
That's during this process that discussions with Octoperf started which ultimately lead Cooperative U's decision to make the switch from Neoload to Octoperf.
This article will explain why Cooperative U made this decision, how they implemented that change with SIGMA's help and what they are planning to do next to integrate Octoperf even more in their IT environment.
Why Switching from Neoload to Octoperf ?¶
Developing a performance testing strategy for an entire company is important especially in huge IT groups like U Tech. U Tech needed to democratize performance testing internally, which demanded a tool that:
- could be simple enough to be accessed and used by a lot of different parties, with different technical backgrounds. The tool's platform and licensing platform,
- could be accessed easily on a centralized platform,
- had to be easy to scale up, technically and financially, as more and more tests were expected with potentially more concurrent Virtual Users.
Octoperf allows for a centralized platform that anyone in the company can access, with a modern UI that was, very recently, entirely revamped with the latest technologies. This interface was made with one idea in mind: making performance testing as accessible as possible to any newcomer in the field, while still offering deep technical functionalities that allows for powerful performance testing.
The licensing model allows for multiple tests to be launched at the same time by different testers, up to the maximum number of concurrent users offered by the license. The duration and number of tests per month are also unlimited. Which means that after subscribing to Octoperf, you don't need to worry about floating licenses, as opposed to Neoload's licensing model. And all of that at a very competitive price, without big sudden licensing changes that can happen when a software company is bought, as Octoperf is still a founders owned company. This makes it a great choice if you are planning on gradually generalizing load testing in an entire company, which requires committing to a software for multiple years.
Taking all of this into account, U Tech decided to switch to Octoperf.
The Switch¶
The first step, as always with any new tool, was to learn how to use it. One of SIGMA's experts, Jerome Le Pottier, was already familiar with the tool as he previously managed another similar switch in another company, from LoadRunner to Octoperf. Furthermore, the fact that SIGMA is an Octoperf certified partner greatly accelerated the entire process.
Still, U Tech needed more resources familiar with the tool to jump-start the migration. To that end, Octoperf can provide 2 days trainings to jump-start the on-boarding process. This training was tailored to fit any profile, with or without prior performance testing knowledge. It covers from the basics of load testing to advanced Octoperf functionalities, with the end goal of giving the ability to the trainees to start their own load testing campaigns.
After this initial step, load testing scripts had to be moved from Neoload to Octoperf. As Neoload uses proprietary scripting technologies, as opposed to Octoperf which offers reversabilty towards the open-source tool JMeter, it was not possible to convert them automatically. As Neoload's license was not yet expired, it was decided to gradually migrate the old load testing projects to Octoperf, while new projects were directly created on Octoperf.
That rescripting phase on Octoperf was deemed painless, as Octoperf's interface greatly simplify each steps involved to perform a load testing campaign, from the recording process, the design phase, to the detailed and user-friendly reporting engine.:
One thing that especially facilitated the migration process was Octoperf's support which was greatly appreciated by Cooperative U and SIGMA. Octoperf's support can be contacted by email or by live chat:
This direct communication system guarantees a quick answer to issues that customers might have. Those direct and fast communication channels made Cooperative U feels that actual people at Octoperf were involved and invested in their project's success.
Future Steps¶
In the coming months, Cooperative U's main goal will be to continue generalizing load testing in the company, as it's embracing AGILE and transforming its entire IT management, the end goal being making each internal products team independent in their testing process. This will be made gradually, as more and more people will onboard Octoperf.
It is also planned to integrate Octoperf with functional testing, in order to have a full and comprehensive testing process.
Technically speaking, the next steps include:
- installing Octoperf in their Kubernetes platform, which is one of the possibilities offered by Octoperf,
- having both on-premise and cloud agents, to perform even more realistic load tests depending on the targeted platform,
- connect Octoperf and Grafana, to correlate Octoperf's metrics with the monitoring already in place,
- use Octoperf's integrations with DEVOPS solutions, which includes a Jenkins and a Maven plugin.
All those options and functionalities are part of the default license, like all Octoperf's functionalities.
Octoperf's team will gladly continue assisting Cooperative U in the future during those endeavors.