Wartburg College in the Rotterdam area used Novell GroupWise 2012 for e-mail. Instability of the server environment made Wartburg College realize it was time to look at another solution.
Wartburg College
Wartburg College offers Christian secondary education on a Reformation basis. The school has 500 employees and 4000 students, spread over four locations in Rotterdam and Dordrecht. Students can attend Wartburg College for practical education, vmbo, mavo, havo, atheneum and gymnasium.
Increased risk
The server environment at Wartburg College was unstable. This fact, combined with the fact that the local management department was not always present during vacations and weekends, meant that the continuity of the e-mail environment could not be guaranteed. Therefore, Wartburg College decided to replace the existing solution with a cloud solution from Microsoft’s Office 365 platform. In an interview, PQR outlined its approach to this type of project and discussed a number of prerequisites for successful implementation and migration. Reinald Rodenburg, ICT department leader at Wartburg College: “We then asked PQR to develop a proposal for the implementation and migration to Microsoft Office 365.”
Migration according to PQR project approach
The project proved to be extensive: it involved the GroupWise infrastructure for all Wartburg College employees and students. Staff mailboxes were migrated, those of students were not. For this project, the hardware and software offered were not the most important. Essential was the PQR project approach and the knowledge and experience with similar migration projects and technologies – requested by Wartburg College. As one of the few Microsoft Cloud Deployment Partners, PQR has a proven approach to deploying Microsoft Office 365 to customers. “We already had experience with PQR and Microsoft implementations. In October 2012 we did a project to install and configure Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012,” said Rodenburg. “We found PQR to be a knowledgeable partner during this project and were extremely satisfied with the final delivered project.” Staff at Wartburg College are heavily involved in the project with training on the job and educational implementation.
Team ensures success
PQR has extensive experience with this type of process and the organization is optimally equipped for this. A project team was formed for this implementation. This team was led by a PQR project manager who worked closely with the Wartburg College manager and certified and experienced technical consultants from PQR. The clear project methodology and the design of a practically proven and client-specific project plan once again provided an excellent basis for project implementation.
Case study: Office 365 at Wartburg College
The existing solution provided e-mail functionality to approximately 500 staff and 4,000 students. Staff additionally used local mail archives. Rodenburg: “For the new situation, it was important that the provided solution had Single Sign-On (SSO) capabilities and that the management of accounts and users was done from the local Active Directory. The mail data and personal GroupWise archives of the staff needed to be migrated to Office 365, while those of the students did not. They were given an empty mailbox in Office 365.”
Results
To ensure the successful migration and setup of Office 365, and to investigate whether the environment was suitable for this purpose, PQR conducted a baseline assessment on the local Active Directory. Based on this baseline assessment, an Office 365 Deployment Workshop was conducted, which in turn served as a guide for the technical design. Using this information, PQR drafted the functional-technical design, the parameter document, and the migration plan for the new Office 365 platform. “Subsequently, the new Office 365 platform was built, and the migration server installed, after which the 500 mailboxes of the employees were migrated,” stated Rodenburg. “Within GroupWise, a user has both a mailbox and a mail archive. In that archive, the archived ‘old’ mail is stored. With the migration tool, the personal mail archives of the users were also transferred. Achieving this without proper tooling and the required expertise is not straightforward! In early 2014, the ‘Migration from GroupWise to MS Office 365’ project was successfully delivered to full satisfaction.”
Problem
- Unstable server environment
- The local administration department is not always present during holidays and weekends.
- The risk of continuity in the Groupware environment.
Solution
- Microsoft Office 365 cloud solution for email staff and students.
- Migration of personal mailboxes and mail archives for staff.
Results
- Stable Office 365-e-mail environment
- Cloud solution including personal mail archive for staff.