International Migration
Background
In 2016 Datek engaged with a UK based litigation management company. They were using servers situated in Australia as this was the location of their parent company. The UK business had decided to split from the Australian company and become a stand-alone entity. In order for this to happen the business needed its own IT infrastructure and this had to happen in a very short space of time in order to maintain business continuity. Datek were appointed to carry out this project.
Our Approach
A typical project can and should have a careful design and scoping phase to ensure that the requirements of the business are fully understood. This process had to happen in a matter of days in order to meet the delivery requirement of the client. Fortunately, we were able to liaise with the in house IT department in Australia and quickly provided the business with an IT solution which would address the needs of the business. This included:
- Implementation and hosting of new servers and storage
- Implementation of Veeam Backup and Replication
- Implementation of VMWare and Microsoft server technology
- Migration of Exchange Email services from Australia to UK
- Migration of several 3rd party business applications
- Co-location of servers into a datacentre
Creative Solutions and going the extra mile
Due to data security considerations, the business insisted that emails were moved immediately as a priority. The new servers were not available at this point as the project had only been signed off the previous day. Therefore, we had to find a creative solution to moving their email away from Australia without delay. To achieve this we temporarily implemented Office 365, which although not fully compatible with all the clients 3rd party applications, it would at least give them email continuity which was most important at this time. We then exported all of the email from the Australian system and switched email flow to use the temporary solution. Whilst this wasn’t ideal, we wanted to help the client wherever possible and go the extra mile. Once the new on-premise email server was ready, we migrated the email away from Office 365.
Quick Infrastructure Turnaround
During the email migration, we also had other members of our team working on the server infrastructure. Datek hold a large amount of server hardware in stock so we were able to start work on preparing new hardware immediately. The environment consisted of several servers with shared storage which allowed us to build a resilient environment which could withstand multiple failures. This was connected using Cisco switches and firewalls. The client didn’t want any infrastructure in their offices so we had to find them space in a datacentre. We have an excellent relationship with our datacentre supplier and they were able to provision a rack for us at short notice to install the new equipment into.
Managing 3rd party suppliers
As with many projects, there were several 3rd party software providers who we needed to liaise with. We ensured they had remote access to servers and the permissions that they needed to work efficiently. We also provided a project management wrap, around the whole project to ensure that all parties were meeting deadlines.
The Datek Difference
Process is very important, especially in the IT industry. However, sometimes a flexible approach is required when a client needs something done quickly. In this instance we were able to pull out all the stops for the client and deliver a significant infrastructure and migration project at very short notice. Read more about our IT office relocation services here.
