Thanks Gianni. I did refer that link earlier but it didn't strike me that it could help my cause Anyways, I got around that issue but still cannot get BVT to work due to another issue which I believe is related to how SSO and WNI are set up. Will work with those teams internally to resolve this. Thanks.

Update - I ftp'ed the BVT on to my linux server and executed it after providing catalog root path in testconfig.xml, but still get the same error.