British Midland (bmi)

British Midland (bmi) - from Novell to Windows platforms

Fujitsu was chosen to manage and deliver the migration project because of its expertise in both Novell and Microsoft environments together with its track record in managing complex IT projects.

The Challenge

bmi is the UK’s second largest full service airline and is recognised for innovation as well as for the quality of its products and services. This culture is reflected in bmi’sview of IT and the role it plays in the business.

bmi’s infrastructure was a mix of Novell NetWare and Microsoft Windows. bmi had made a strategic decision to migrate all services from Novell NetWare to Microsoft Windows platforms. This would allow a subsequent migration to Microsoft Windows 2000.

A major challenge for bmi was to complete the migration with minimal changes to the users’ working environment and with minimal service disruption.

The Solution

bmi chose Fujitsu to manage and deliver the migration project, including designing and implementing the technical solution, and then to take full responsibility for its implementation. Since most users would have to be visited to complete desktop configurations, particular attention was paid in the design stage to ensuring all work could becompleted in one visit, thus minimising disruption.

Around 450 mail users were migrated to Exchange and shared and personal data was migrated from nineteen NetWare servers and consolidated onto six Windows 2000 file servers. Users often shared data across multiple servers in different locations across the UK, so management and co-ordination of the migration activitieswas a key to achieving the project milestones.

Richard Dawson, IT Director, bmi, comments “Fujitsu grasped the extent of our problem very quickly and worked with us effectively to design and then implement a series of complex changes which minimised disruption.”

The Benefits

The migration was the first phase of a project to improve desktop services, bringing greater stability to the user environment, and to centralise services in a smaller number of key locations simplifying support. The migration itself has already helped bmi to:

Reduce operational costs
Improve the stability of the server platform
Improve reliability of the services delivered to users

The Implementation

With all migration activity, reliable information about the current environment is key. Email was used extensively to locate the users who would be affected and to communicateinformation about the migration activity and timetable.

Email accounts were migrated server by server to reduce issues with directory addresses and synchronisation. Engineers were on hand to reconfigure desktops and provide initial support to users post migration.

Data migrations were completed overnight and on returning to work the next day users were automatically connected to their new data areas. Again local engineers were on hand to offer post migration support.

The Expertise

Fujitsu was chosen to manage and deliver the migration project because of its expertise in both Novell and Microsoft environments together with its track record inmanaging complex IT projects.

Richard Dawson adds, “Through this project Fujitsu has demonstrated its ability to design and implement complex change in the desktop arena. The project has successfully achieved its objectives and has positioned bmi for the next stage of change to the infrastructure.”