Having completed email migration, the Swiss company needed a system for sunsetting the remaining Domino servers and applications
CUSTOMER
Von Roll
INDUSTRY
Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing
SOFTWARE
COUNTRY
Switzerland
EMPLOYEES
1001-5000
Customer
One of Switzerland’s longest-established industrial companies, Von Roll is a full-range supplier of materials and systems for the insulation of electrical machines, as well as of high-performance products for various high-tech industries. Von Roll’s business portfolio is divided into Von Roll Insulation and Von Roll Composites. Von Roll Insulation offers electrical insulation products, systems, and services for generators, high- and low-voltage motors, transformers, and other applications. Von Roll Composites produces composite materials and parts for a variety of industrial equipment.
Challenge
Von Roll has been using the Lotus Notes and Domino platform for many years and until recently had 17 Domino servers deployed worldwide. Due to the company’s decision to migrate from Lotus Notes to other platforms, strategies had to be formed to facilitate the migration and archiving of key Lotus Notes applications.
The process was first started by moving email from Domino to Exchange and Exchange Online, followed by the migration of several Notes/Domino applications to new systems or commercial applications.
With the initial move completed, the number of Domino servers was brought down to four servers that continued to run, so that around 900 users could continue to access the data in legacy applications that had not been migrated.
“The main benefit for us was to be able to export different databases with different designs in a central storage while preserving the unique look and feel of each database.”
— Nassim Mouafi, System Engineer
One of those applications was an ERP application, consisting of 7 databases and approximately 550,000 Notes documents.
Von Roll’s final challenge in their Lotus Notes exit strategy was to archive the last set of applications in order to decommission the final four servers, and complete the Lotus Notes sunset program.
Solution
Von Roll set out to find the best way to archive the applications by moving their data to Microsoft SharePoint, and then evaluating several solutions.
Mr. Nassim Mouafi, the System Engineer (Messaging & Collaboration) at Von Roll said: “I have known SWING Software since years, and their basic PDF Converter export solution. But when I checked their website again, I discovered the new Seascape product which looked like a perfect solution for me. Seascape uses the PDF Converter’s API for the conversion of Notes documents to PDF, but it adds so much more additional value that it was no longer necessary to continue evaluating other solutions.”
In regard to the deployment of the SWING Seascape solution Mr. Mouafi said: “The main benefit for us was to be able to export different databases with different designs in a central storage while preserving the unique look and feel of each database. SWING Seascape allowed us to do that right out-of-the-box, with minimal effort needed on our side. SWING Software’s support was also always at hand to assist with any questions and minor issues, and I greatly appreciated their superb responsiveness and expert assistance.”
Results
Several applications are still being migrated to Microsoft SharePoint by moving the Notes records and metadata to SharePoint libraries. From there, new SharePoint forms will be built that allow the users to continue working with the data in SharePoint.
As for the applications being retired, those were converted to Seascape’s Web Archives, and then also hosted in SharePoint libraries. Users of the archives were especially pleased with the familiar look of the archives, which included all of the original view structures, packaged in a fresh and modern interface.
With more than 15 years of experience in data migration and compliance archiving, we will gladly share with you some of the best practices.
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