The Client

The client is wholly owned by the Malaysian government and invested with the entire ownership and control of the petroleum resources in Malaysia. Over the years, the client has grown to become a fully-integrated oil and gas corporation and is ranked among the FORTUNE Global 500’s largest corporations in the world. the client has four subsidiaries listed on the Bursa Malaysia and has ventured globally into more than 30 countries worldwide in its aspiration to become a leading oil and gas corporation of choice.

Business Needs

• The client implemented Lotus Notes in 1995, becoming one ofLotus’ largest enterprise-scale customers. This decision was made by the client’s desire for a visionary and innovative knowledge managementapproach. At that time, Notes was the only platform, which allowedknowledge sharing on the global scale. It quickly became one of thecompany’s most crucial IT solutions supporting both communicationsand knowledge sharing requirements. Over the period, the client developed a number of sophisticated Notes-based applicationssupporting every activity throughout the company.
• By 2004, the client realized a lot of confusion had beencreated in the market place around Lotus Notes. Lotus announced itsintention to re-architect the Notes messaging and collaborationplatform. The new architecture would require most customers toundertake massive investment of re-architecting and redesign.The client also foresaw a move to the Microsoft collaboration platform(consisting of Microsoft Server 2003, Exchange Server 2003, andSharePoint Portal Server 2003) would guarantee a robust messaging andcollaboration platform and increase reliance on converged mobiletechnology such as personal data assistants and mobile phones.
• Although the transition would be complicated, The client believed the solution would allow its 20,000 staff, spreading across6 different regions communicating by more than 10,000 applications towork more effectively and offer significant savings in capital aswell as operating and maintaining costs. In addition, the client couldleverage its investments in the Windows operating systems, MicrosoftOffice applications already deployed to its employees.

The Challenges

An Exchange migration is one of the most, labor-intensiveprojects an organization can undertake. The followings are some of thechallenges that come with this kind of project:

• The relevant data were stored in multiple customerrepositories that did not allow visibility and require a long time ofestimation.
• This was a time-critical need. Execution speed was thereforecrucial, and the project team had to scale up very quickly, withoutimpacting deliverable quality, or costs.
• The solution had to be forward looking – there was a need toensure that enough flexibility was built-in to the new system, toaccommodate changing business and regulatory requirements.
• Another was to manage so many application interfaces andsimultaneously streamline the migration process.
• Also, apart from typical data quality issues, the existingsystem was also dependent on an abundance of applications. This posedadded complexity to the migration exercise.
• Furthermore, a shift to another collaboration platform isalways accompanied with changing management. This needs awell-rounded anticipation and strategy of the whole scenario in orderto minimize the impact on end users who has been long working withNotes.

The Solutions

• Once the decision was made to migrate, the client moved swiftly to work with FPT Software – Microsoft Gold Certified Partner CustomerDevelopment Solutions and Networking Infrastructure Solutions.
• FPT Software first conducted a thorough assessment of theexisting Notes applications to determine the costs and benefitsassociated with migrating them to the Microsoft software solutions.FPT Software quickly learned the size and complexity of theNotes-based applications, determined the appropriate architecture forthe new environment, and made its recommendations for each of theNotes applications.
• Based on the result, the project team began by migrating 3typical applications from Lotus Notes to SPS/.NET and convertmailboxes of 150 users to Exchange as a proof-of-concept formigrating its entire Notes environment.
• For the client’s employees’ long experience with Notes, the shiftto a new collaboration platform required a huge change managementeffort. The change management service was to ensure that all the client’s users were prepared for the move from Notes to a Microsoft environment. Consequently, we implemented an aggressive educationprogramme; much of it was computer-based self-study, supported byfrequent and relevant communication. The programme also empoweredend-users to make their own transition and preserve whatever personalnecessary data.
• To complete the shift of applications from Lotus Notes to theMicrosoft collaboration platform, we remediated, retired applicationsin which Notes serves as the fundamental architecture. The team alsoplanned to create a new knowledge management platform, which isbetter tailored to the information and business needs of the client’s personnel.
• We divided the project into 3 steps:
  • Discovery: Getting the right number of applications to be migrated, first round analysis by Application Analyzer and resource estimation and interviewing business process and IT services owners.
  • Assessment: Drilling down into application business logic, plotting them into migration patterns, and defining the strategy and schedule.
  • Delivery: Applying database analyzer, data correction, permission setting and test manager tools to cater for the repetitive nature of migration work and the large number of applications being migrated.

The Benefits

• Significant cost savings as the unnecessary licensingexpenses for thousands of application was no more.
• Reduce cost and complexity by standardizing on a singledirectory service.
• The client’s enterprise-wide IT objective of gaining anadaptable, central 360 degree view of messaging and collaborationsystem was fulfilled.
• The productivity and flexibility of employees of the client has been improved after the complement of the system migration project.

Technologies Used:

MS Exchange Server 2003, VS.NET2003, SQL Server 2005, Source Code K2.NET 2003, Cashahl ecKnowledge 8.1.6, Application Transporter, MIIS, Quest Migrator, Notes Connector.