Amalgamated Holdings Limited (AHL) is one of Australia’s premier entertainment, entertainment technology, hospitality and leisure companies. They operate in over 120 locations across Australia, New Zealand and Europe with brands such as Greater Union, Rydges Hotels & Resorts, Kosciusko Thredbo, the State Theatre and Featherdale Wildlife Park. AHL also own the largest film-processing laboratory in Australia and design, manufacture and install film-processing equipment.
AHL also own the largest film-processing laboratory in Australia and design, manufacture and install film-processing equipment.
With AHL’s diverse business units adapting to its unique markets, clients and environments, the importance placed on its IT systems and infrastructure is paramount. From selling movie tickets online to taking reservations at hotels, AHL is dependent on efficient and effective IT environments.
Due to the increased use of new technologies such as iPhones, PDAs and other smartphone technology, it became imperative that AHL update its Lotus Notes email collaboration platform.
The business decided that it needed to migrate over 2,000 mailboxes and users from Lotus Notes to the Microsoft Exchange platform,to further enhance business functionality and take advantage of easier ways to connect staff and enable staff productivity. This would prove to be no easy task,with thousands of email dependent work processes, and a system built over 15 years, the process would require high-level skills, detailed planning and specialised expertise.
AHL investigated the options of managing the migration to Microsoft Exchange in-house, however it was deemed that the cost, time, skills and resources required, were too large for the business to independently cover. The answer was to outsource the migration process to IT specialists.
IMC Communications was chosen to design, manage and implement the migration, due to its proven track record of delivering complex IT projects, its proactive network management services, its Microsoft Gold Partnership and because IMC have the team of engineers on-staff to carry out a project requiring this. level of expertise and know-how.
Scope of Works
The first stage of the project involved a thorough and detailed analysis of the current Lotus Notes environment. It was particularly important to map the workflows across the business, especially because many of the business processes in AHL are highly reliant on email, email groups and shared mailboxes.
This analysis would see the IMC Engineers mapping unique scenarios from,email access levels of staff who work at Candy Bars in the cinemas,through to critical head-office functions, to the reservation inbox at any of AHL’s 5 star hotels.
The environment of the hotel is important to map correctly, not only from an IT perspective but also from a customer relationship and legal perspective. Proper records and archiving of correspondence is required by AHL to ensure customer interaction and staff behaviour are properly monitored, reported and managed.
The investigation by IMC included reviewing available documentation, detailed systems analysis ,and interviewing key personnel to fill in the gaps, resulting in a completely documented environment.
The detailed mapping was crucial to ensure that when the migration to Microsoft occurred, there would be minimal disruptions to business operations. It is also important for the continuity and sustainability of the network. Having detailed documentation means that, in the future, support engineers can get an accurate and complete picture of the network with relative ease.
The Analysis
The analysis revealed a complex picture of all user profiles, mail workflows, database integration and all the various printer and scanner connectivity.
It also identified the workflows (or work methodologies) that needed to be adapted to work within the new BPOS Microsoft Exchange.
The identification of the processes that would need to be adapted or re-engineered was vital during the planning phase.
A vital step at this stage was building a team of analysts and engineers who knew both the Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange environments extremely well. They were able to assess the work methodologies and ‘translate’ what would work between the two. This vital component of expertise made this process of identification and planning possible.
Preparation and Planning
The next phase of the migration was the preparation of the data. As the database and network had been built up over 15 years, with thousands of users accessing it daily, it had to be ‘cleaned’. This involved developing data migration templates, populating the fields and carefully sanitising the data extracted from the existing systems.
The IMC team needed to ensure that the Active Directory could be synchronised reliably with the BPOS Active Directory.
Scripting the Gaps
Where synchronisation wasn’t possible across the two systems, it was necessary for the IMC engineers to custom script patches. This required pioneering works by the IMC team to achieve the goal of transferring data from Lotus through to the BPOS Microsoft Exchange environment.
Scripting of the migration tools relied on not only an intimate knowledge of both the Lotus and Microsoft environments, but also a sound and thorough understanding of the business purpose and processes.
Co-existing
The decision to migrate to Microsoft’s BPOS Hosted Mail solution meant that all AHL mail data would need to be transferred via the Internet to the Microsoft BPOS Server Farm situated in Hong Kong.
Clearly the migration of such a large volume of mailboxes needed to be staged over a number of weeks. During this time, full functionality needed to be maintained. To manage this the IMC engineering team designed, piloted and then implemented the Integration Co-existing Tools which allowed the business to operate smoothly during this crucial phase.
This phase raised unique challenges, as it was vital that the two systems (and hence users) could still talk to one another. A simple example of this is a user on Lotus Notes sending a meeting request with various users across the business – some on Lotus Notes and some on Microsoft Exchange. The meeting request needs to talk to everyone’s calendars and be flexible.
The Migration
While the co-existence phase was occurring, 200 users were being migrated across to the Microsoft BPOS platform every night. The scripting designed in the previous phase enabled the migration to occur at this pace.
As the data migration traversed the internet( via AHL’s corporate internet links), the IMC Network Engineers needed to manage internet link performance in order to cope with the increased traffic demands, without impacting AHL’s critical web based business functions, such as online ticketing.
The IMC Network Services team temporarily re-engineered AHL’s internet connection in order to deal with this.
The Result
AHL now runs its 2,000+ business mailboxes on the Microsoft Exchange BPOS Platform. The migration process involved careful analysis of its current system, thorough documentation of the work methodologies and in some cases the re-engineering of its business processes.
The custom scripting, design, piloting and implementation of the ‘co-existence’ phase, were some of the crucial components to the success of this large migration. This detailed and highly-skilled undertaken by the IMC Communications engineering team allowed for business continuity across a myriad of business units within the AHL Group.
