Client Profile
Wolters Kluwer is one of the world's leading publishers and providers of information products and services. The worldwide activities of Wolters Kluwer revolve around its professional customers in the health, tax, accounting, corporate, financial services, legal and regulatory, and education sectors.
Wolters Kluwer's mission is to be The Professionals' First Choice for information, tools, and solutions to help professionals make their most critical decisions effectively and to improve their productivity. Within this vision, Wolters Kluwer builds on its powerful brand and market positions to provide value to its customers through current, accurate, and expert information; leading edge technology and software solutions; and excellent customer service.
The Business Challenge
Faced with a multitude of diverse messaging and directory systems, Wolters Kluwer's leadership team recognized the need to restructure its internal business processes. Like other complex enterprises competing in a demanding global business climate, Wolters Kluwer wanted to facilitate more efficient ways for knowledge workers to collaborate and access critical business communications within a shared, centralized environment.
Wolters Kluwer had a decentralized IT model with a mixture of Lotus Notes, Exchange 5.5, Exchange 2000 and other mail systems - as well as multiple directory environments.
In order to meet its objectives, Wolters Kluwer required a standardized enterprise platform solution for all its messaging, communication, collaboration, and enterprise application needs. Having all employees in a centralized environment would not only expedite the ability to leverage and share knowledge, it would also eliminate the operational and cost inefficiencies associated with working on disparate platforms.
The final solution needed to balance a highly functional and easy-to-manage system with tight security, reliability and high availability -- and, of course, be delivered with minimal cost and disruption, within a demanding timeframe.
The PointBridge Solution: A Single Enterprise Active Directory and Exchange 2003 Platform
PointBridge assisted and played a key role in architecting and implementing the solution that moved Wolters Kluwer from a heterogeneous, multi-platform, messaging and collaboration environment to one built exclusively on the Microsoft platform. The platform included Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Exchange Server 2003 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003.
Designed to deliver greater security, availability, and reliability, Wolters Kluwer's new messaging and collaboration platform enables its employees to gain access to critical business communications whenever and wherever needed. Enhanced collaboration features such as shared calendars, public folders, meeting scheduling, shared contacts and task lists, and remote access will improve overall company communication and productivity.
Recognizing the Benefits
During the course of the project, Wolters Kluwer plans to consolidate over 40 data centers in North America to a shared and centralized data center servicing all of its multiple customer units. This solution will help Wolters Kluwer reduce business and operational risks attributable to multiple data center operations across its North American Shared Services and achieve the following business goals:
- Improved communication and collaboration: Whether at the office, telecommuting from home, or connecting remotely, consistently efficient access to personal business information -- independent of network characteristics -- enables workers to get their work done more quickly.
- Increased Reliability and Scalability: Windows Enterprise Server 2003 and Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS) were utilized to provide high availability and redundancy. Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS) 2003 was utilized to provide a corporate-wide global messaging directory, adding further scalability to the solution. The resulting reduction of downtime is expected to have a positive financial impact.
- Return on Investment: The high degree of server and data center consolidation of this initiative will result in reduced infrastructure, operational, hardware and administrative costs.
- Improved Information Systems Efficiencies: By maintaining more control over architecture and design, improved service levels -- such as an increase in Disaster Recovery capabilities and a consolidated Service Desk -- are anticipated.
- Security : The combination of Active Directory, Windows Server and Exchange Server provides a secure platform from which employees can engage in effective collaboration between business units and have access to critical communications whenever and wherever needed -- without the risk of unauthorized access to company systems.
- Access and Mobility: Remote access to mail provided by Outlook Web Access (OWA), ActiveSync, and RPC-HTTPS provides Wolters Kluwer with an all-embracing global solution for its employees.
Getting Started
PointBridge was originally brought into the project as subject matter experts on Exchange and subsequently managed the AD design. The PointBridge team ultimately included five people who worked closely with Wolters Kluwer employees and other Microsoft partners to design and implement the solution. PointBridge contributed deep expertise in Active Directory, Exchange, SharePoint, Clustering and messaging architecture as well as migration tools and support.
Wolters Kluwer provided PointBridge with detailed information about their current and desired state environment. This documentation was essential in order to create accurate plans and designs for Exchange architecture.
Overcoming Obstacles
Consolidating multiple business units (with 14 different, frequently "home grown" mail, authentication and messaging platforms) into a single authentication and message platform represented significant challenges. For example, the team needed to understand and work around existing directories with considerable integration and customization. Additionally, the team was challenged by the sheer volume of uncentralized users and the unique business constraints of various business units.
In order to overcome synchonrization and deployment obstacles, PointBridge leveraged additional Microsoft products, including MIIS, Office 2003 Resource Kit, SharePoint, Group Policy Objects (GPOs), and VBScript.
A combination of customized Management Agent "join" rules and VBScripts were utilized to overcome the challenge of transitioning authoritative data sources for MIIS 2003 from Notes and Exchange 5.5 systems to the Active Directory/Exchange 2003 environment -- without destroying Metadirectory objects or impacting other connected systems.
Active Directory and Exchange Architecture Completed
Wolters Kluwer's new platform is designed to support its current needs as well as set the foundation for worldwide adoption by the entire enterprise of 18,400 employees.
After the completion of several test and pilot phases, the production migration of users was set into motion. Currently, a significant percentage of North American users have been migrated to the EDGE platform with the remainder of the migrations scheduled over a six-month period. During this phase, several PointBridge people will remain on the project.
The migration phase is expected to be completed over the next several years as Europe and Asia Pacific are added to the initiative.
User Training Provided
A web portal based on SharePoint Team Services was designed to train Wolters Kluwer end users and helpdesk staff. Additional training was provided with online, computer-based training. To assist with the field migrations of individual business units, PointBridge consultants trained Wolters Kluwer information system (IS) staff on migration techniques and tools, including the Quest mail migration tools.
End Result
The PointBridge solution will help Wolters Kluwer move to a shared services model, centralize operations, consolidate systems, and share information more efficiently.
As a result, Wolters Kluwer will be able to drive down the total cost of ownership in administrating user accounts, server hardware acquisition and maintenance costs, and systems.
In addition, the migration will increase productivity, streamline workflow and collaboration, and satisfy changing security requirements - all mission critical objectives for Wolters Kluwer. Users already migrated have experienced:
- Vastly improved mobile access and an enhanced e-mail experience that includes the popular features of Outlook 2003, such as the right-hand Preview Pane and updated navigation bar
- Less network down time
- Improved IS support
- Streamlined access to corporate resources and the ability to run more applications
PointBridge received the Microsoft 2005 Exchange Migration and Deployment Excellence Award for this project.
About PointBridge, LLC
PointBridge ( www.pointbridge.com ) is an IT consulting firm delivering advanced Microsoft solutions for the most complex business and technology environments. The Company's commitment to Microsoft technologies, combined with the exceptional skill and experience of its people, has led PointBridge to become one of the fastest growing Microsoft partners in the U.S. Midwest District. PointBridge is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in Advanced Infrastructure, Information Worker and Security Solutions. PointBridge is the proud winner of the Microsoft 2005 Technology Innovation Partner of the Year Award for Advanced Infrastructure Solutions.