Background
Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 entered the market on December 3, 2013. This release came up with more advanced messaging and collaboration experience for the users. The customer was using Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. In order to meet the needs of modern businesses, they were looking for a technology partner with rich experience in infrastructure management to support migration of the users from the existing Microsoft Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2013 environment.

Business Needs

• Design and implementation of IT-refresh solution which ensures the customer environment is at par with latest industry standards – while maintaining zero downtime and no interruptions to ongoing business activity
• Implementation of mailbox service with resiliency and scalability
• Migration of all the users to an upgraded email platform (Microsoft Exchange 2013)
• Provision and support of user access for all services through mobile devices

Our Work
Our work in this engagement centred around developing an automated migration process with minimal end-user impact. To meet all project requirements, we leveraged the microsoft solutions framework to divide the project into multiple phases that could be easily managed. Some of the key highlights of our solution were:

• Developed a migration process to ensure the enduser communications were in accordance with the change management plan.
• Throughout the initial migrations, the process was refined to simplify future migrations and improve overall success rates.
• The pilot migration of the user’s mailboxes was successful with minimal end-user impact.
• Executing the remaining user’s mailboxes to Exchange 2013 required minimal manual effort, thus reducing resource requirements and overall project costs.
• By migrating to Exchange 2013, the client received a feature rich messaging platform, a proven migration methodology, and an approach validated across many different clients with unique requirements.
• The automated migration process eliminated issues inherent in multi-step processes for thousands of mailboxes, and it also minimised the amount of future administrative time required for any particular migration event.

Business Benefits

• Flexible and reliable messaging platform
• Improved failover and disaster recovery (DR) capability
• Reduced storage costs
• Enhanced mailbox backup and recovery
• Integrated mailbox archiving

Our value offering
Throughout the course of the engagement, NEC Software Solutions (India) has played the role of a technology partner rather than a service vendor. Our service delivery has been based on the following key pillars:

• Service Delivery – Our experience in working on large scale IT programs and our reputation as a trusted technology partner, coupled with a strong set of frameworks, methodologies, and best practices enable us to deliver beyond customer expectations.
• Domain Expertise – Our focus on the publishing domain and our understanding of the STM publishing business enables us to design solutions and workaround issues like an extended part of the client’s team.

Innovation & Continuous Improvement
Our focus on innovation and the continuous enhancement of existing systems enables us to work as an extended offshore team rather than a service provider.