Currently employing over 25,000 people Littlewoods was originally founded in 1923 as a football pools business. It has grown into one of the UK's largest and most successful private businesses, encompassing home shopping, retail stores and in 1985 it launched the Index catalogues and subsequently the Index stores.
As part of the organization's group integration strategy Littlewoods had to bring together all their systems and applications and consolidate the IT skills and resources around a platform and database of choice. The strategic decision was made to establish their system based on the Sun Solaris server and Oracle relational database. They would then progressively eliminate their Bull, DEC Alpha and other proprietary platforms.
They were able to eliminate certain platforms quickly, but it was vital with the critical applications running on the Bull DPS system that they retain the look and feel of the programs following the migration to Sun.
Transoft provided the solution for this migration.
Des Donachie, Information Systems Development Manager, DFID
Transoft Acquired by Advanced Computer Software Group