Vodafone employees depend on e-mail to meet their business goals. At Vodafone Ireland, IT administrators planned to move the messaging environment from IBM Lotus Notes to Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003. The move was in line with a migration to the Microsoft solution across the whole Vodafone Group. With Quest Software, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Vodafone Ireland migrated 2,220 mailboxes to the new environment. Employees immediately embraced the e-mail solution, which improved remote access through a familiar interface. A subsequent upgrade to Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 also provided “push technology” to boost e-mail using mobile devices. Today, with better e-mail access, employees can organise their workloads better and maintain a healthier work/life balance.

Situation

The most successful business people are the most responsive. They react quickly to customer demands, come up with fresh ideas, and capitalise on new business opportunities. But, for people to be responsive, they need business tools that promote mobile working and support productivity outside the day-to-day office environment. They require solutions that truly help them realise their potential.

As a leading telecommunications business, the Vodafone Group understands the power of mobile communication. Vodafone is Ireland’s leading mobile services provider, with a customer base of over 2.17 million and a market share of over 47 per cent. On May 11, 2001, the Irish company officially became a subsidiary of the Vodafone Group, the world’s leading mobile telecommunications company.

 The group has built its success on providing customers with a range of services that capture the latest developments in anytime, anywhere access to voice and data solutions. Yet, this commitment to driving mobile communications extends beyond the client base. It also includes Vodafone employees, and the company is keen for workers to use the latest solutions, promoting mobile working.

In 2001, Vodafone Group took the strategic decision to standardise its communication and collaboration environment over the coming years. It chose to roll out Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 across the corporate IT landscape of each country operation. The organisation wanted to capitalise on previous investments in Microsoft enterprise solutions, creating a fully integrated infrastructure. In addition, employees would gain anywhere access to e-mail and calendaring to maximise their responsiveness in business situations.

At Vodafone Ireland, the organisation needed to move 2,220 mailboxes from Lotus Notes to Exchange Server 2003. With the IBM solution, employees did not have remote access to e-mails and calendars so they relied on mobile e-mail services from Blackberry and Visto handheld devices. As well as rolling out Exchange Server 2003, the company wanted to deploy Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 to improve IT administration. With Operations Manager 2005, IT administrators can control the messaging environment more proactively, tackling potential issues before they disrupt services.

With the chance to deliver anywhere, anytime access using the core messaging environment and increase IT productivity, Vodafone Ireland aimed to migrate the mailboxes rapidly. It wanted an IT service provider to support the transition and help minimise disruption. Declan Ivers, Messaging and Workflow Manager at Vodafone Ireland, says: “We wanted to make it as easy as possible for clients, so that when they arrived at work the new e-mail environment was up and running and ready for them to go.”

Solution

After a review of the market, Vodafone chose to work with Quest Software, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, to migrate the mailboxes to Exchange Server. The partner has developed Notes Migrator for Exchange, a deployment solution that streamlines the process of moving e-mail, calendar information, and personal address books to a Microsoft messaging infrastructure.

Work began on the new messaging environment in early summer 2005, and Vodafone Ireland had a production-ready infrastructure in place by July. IT administrators created a clustered Exchange Server environment, integrating it easily with the existing Microsoft infrastructure. This included:

• Windows Server® 2003—delivering the core enterprise operating system.
• Active Directory® directory services—giving IT administrators a simple tool for allocating access rights and connecting new users.
• The Microsoft Office System—providing key business applications such as Microsoft Office Excel® and Microsoft Office Outlook® for e-mail.

At the end of September, Vodafone Ireland launched a pilot migration of 40 users. Ivers says: “It allowed us to test the functionality of the tools—and it worked fine.” Ivers then created a schedule for migrating the remaining 2,220 mailboxes. He chose to move them in batches over four weekends and two week-day evenings. “We were 100 per cent successful,” he says. “Nobody ever arrived to find e-mail wasn’t working. It was a real achievement.”

We were 100 per cent successful. Nobody ever arrived to find e-mail wasn’t working. It was a real achievement. Declan Ivers Messaging and Workflow Manager Vodafone Ireland

Employees adopted the new environment rapidly and began messaging immediately using the Microsoft Office Outlook client. Prior to the system going live, Microsoft provided training to employees to ensure the migration was as seamless as possible. On the day of deployment, a number of “floor walkers” were also on hand to give assistance to personnel.

Employees adopted the system rapidly. Ivers says: “People already knew about Office Outlook and the standard Microsoft Office interface, so they had no problems using the new client.” In 2006, Vodafone Ireland upgraded to Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2). With the SP2 version’s familiar interface, users gained the same experience, but enhanced mobile access and spam protection. IT administrators also found it easier to manage mailboxes.

Benefits

By moving to Exchange Server SP2, people at Vodafone Ireland have gained a messaging environment that improves responsiveness and the ability to capture business opportunities. Workers have better access to e-mail and visibility on calendars through mobile devices.

Increased Responsiveness with Push E-mail
Employees with mobile devices automatically receive new e-mails to their handsets through the push technology in Exchange Server SP2. As a result, they can respond instantly to new messages when outside the office. Previously, people could choose a mobile messaging solution from either Blackberry or Visto. Now, the push e-mail from Microsoft is proving the most popular option.

Dylan Fermoyle is a Business Solutions Consultant at Vodafone Ireland. Focused on the public sector, he works with customers to improve productivity using mobile solutions. “I need to keep up to date with the ever increasing demands of customers,” he says. “And I need access to e-mail at all times—it helps me maintain a healthy work/life balance.”

With push technology, Fermoyle sees e-mails as they arrive through the Office Outlook client on his mobile device. He says: “It helps me acquire and retain customers. I can satisfy the needs of customers when I’m away from my desk.”

IT Personnel Reduce Administration Workload When Vodafone Ireland designed the Exchange Server environment, Ivers clustered the servers to maximise performance. With active and passive nodes, the infrastructure is protected from a single point of failure. As a result, users have enjoyed 99.999 per cent availability, avoiding downtime and loss of e-mail.

Yet, by combing the clustered infrastructure with management solutions such as Operations Manager 2005, IT administrators have reduced workloads for e-mail server and client administration by 20 per cent. Ivers says: “We now spend less time fire fighting and more of our working day being proactive.”

Roadmap Promises Greater Responsiveness
Vodafone Ireland wants to roll out accompanying technologies and latest-version solutions that can increase the business value of its Exchange Server investment. For example, the organisation is currently testing Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005.

Ivers says: “Office Live Communications Server will be rolled out at some point. We are particularly interested in instant messaging on the desktop.” With instant messaging, personnel can contact each other in real-time across a secure connection, gaining instant updates on colleagues’ whereabouts and availability. Ivers also believes that following the success of Exchange Server 2003, Vodafone Ireland will move to Exchange Server 2007 in the future.

Expert Support Delivers Peace of Mind
By choosing to migrate mailboxes to Exchange Server using Quest Software technology, Vodafone Ireland avoided losing any data and disrupting users. Its messaging environment is business critical, with e-mail a vital business tool in day to day operations. Using Quest, the company ensured that when employees launched their new Office Outlook clients, past e-mails, calendars, and address books were all there. They began to take full advantage of the new messaging environment immediately.

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
For more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to:
www.microsoft.com/servers/default.mspx

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/

For more information about Quest Software products and services, visit the Web site at: http://www.quest.com/

For more information about Vodafone Ireland products and services, visit the Web site at: http://www.vodafone.ie/

© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published June 2007 

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published June 2007