Renaissance File Conversion

Case Studies

Renaissance Bureau Service:

The customer, a major computer manufacturer, had been awarded the contract to replace OfficePower with Microsoft's Office and Mail products for a City Council.

Firstly, our staff acted as consultants, providing much needed independent advice about all aspects of OfficePower.

The OfficePower network had grown over a number of years and nobody was really sure how many OfficePower systems were still in existence. Our knowledge enabled us to audit the known OfficePower systems and to quickly build up a comprehensive picture of the X.400 mail network, including communication links, server names, software versions and user details for over 30 OfficePower systems. These ranged from 5-user DRS300/NX systems at neighbourhood offices, to a 400-user DRS6000 in the Civic Centre.

The migration involved replacing each system in turn over a 12-month period, achieved using a two-phase Renaissance strategy.

Firstly, a full back up of all files to be converted was sent well in advance of replacement. Secondly, at the time of system replacement, an incremental back up (consisting of all user files created or modified since the initial full back up) was sent to be converted, and was returned and implemented within 24 hours.

Result - Over 1,400 users migrated within planned time scales and, most impressively, under budget.

Renaissance Rental Service:

The customer, a high-profile MOD site, was replacing OfficePower with Novell's PerfectOffice software suite. The rollout involved replacing users' dumb terminals with a PC running PerfectOffice. This was to be achieved whilst they were away on a training course learning about the new technologies they would be using.

Before the customer even knew about our Renaissance service, the rollout was underway and already users were complaining that no provision had been made to migrate their files forward into the new working environment.

The file conversion had to be run on-site due to the sensitivity of the information contained in the files. One of our Renaissance consultants (who holds MOD security clearance) spent two days on-site performing the conversion for those users who had already transferred to the new technology, converting and implementing over 80,000 files in the process. At the same time, MOD staff were trained how to run the service so that they could convert further files as each subsequent user was migrated.

They continued to rent Renaissance for the duration of the migration project.

Result - Happy IT section and, most importantly, contented users.