About Gwent Police
Gwent Police cover an area of 600 square miles and serves a population of approximately 550,000 people. The Gwent policing area is mixed, rural and urban, and the road network carries large volumes of traffic. Gwent Police Authority work alongside the Force through a Joint Community Engagement Strategy to involve the community in the way local policing services are delivered. Recently, Gwent Police was restructured to provide a more efficient, modern structure to better serve the people of Gwent, tested to its full with the requirements of policing of the 2010 Ryder Cup golf tournament at Celtic Manor.
Gwent Police Authority was recently voted one of the top performing UK Police Authorities.
Recent Improvements to the IT Infrastructure
In line with the move towards modernising and improving public service, Gwent Police recently undertook an IT project to dramatically restructure its IT environment, and bring collaboration between members of the various local government groups to the next level in terms of efficiency and productivity.
Among other things, the move involved transitioning from a Novell-enabled infrastructure to an Active Directory-based architecture and a new way of user authentication. At the same time, the desktop environment was being upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7. For email, the Novell to Microsoft platform switch translated into an email migration from GroupWise to Exchange.
Successfully Dealing with Email Migration Challenges
The Gwent Police IT Department dedicated time on determining the best scenario to handle the email migration. Following the meticulous planning stage, the requirements they established were:
- Ability to migrate several Terabytes of email data with minimal disruption to the productivity of 2500 end users within a fairly short timeframe.
- Ability to migrate all data types from GroupWise 8 to Exchange 2010.
- Ability to inject only a subset of the email data onto the new Exchange system.
- Ability to remain compliant with legislation on records retention and access to information after the email system switch.
- Ability to address eDiscovery requests swiftly in cases of disputes and litigation by having seamless access to the email archives of both the legacy GroupWise and Exchange data.
After considering possible options, Gwent Police selected Messaging Architects to assist them on the email migration. The two organisations already had an established relationship for over 5 years, as the Force were using GWArchive to address their 100% email retention mandate on GroupWise.
Netmail Archive, Messaging Architects' cross-platform version of the archiving software Gwent Police already had in place, had the functionality to perform the migration from GroupWise 8 directly to Exchange 2010. What's more, Netmail Archive included the migration tool and didn't require additional investment beyond their current subscription contract. Messaging Architects were also flexible in adapting to the organisation's procurement regulations and delivering the solution in line with the exceedingly tight timeline Gwent Police had to work with.
As part of the project, Messaging Architects' migration expert was able to review the migration plans and offer additional guidance before setting up the archiving system and configuring the necessary policies for the transfer of data based on the IT Department's requirements.
"David Nicoll from Messaging Architects put in a lot of hard work and provided his expertise when we needed it," says Marc Coughlin, server engineer at Gwent, who was closely involved with the execution of the email migration. "I can say that we got our money's worth. Throughout the project, we have received very solid support on any issues that arose."
The migration is almost complete at Gwent Police. According to the initial plan, about 12 months' worth of users' data is injected into the new Exchange 2010 email system. The remaining email archives reside in the Netmail Archive server and are seamlessly accessible to users through the Outlook client or Outlook Web Access. Netmail Archive will continue to archive email on Exchange applying Gwent Police's email retention policies.
The Benefits of Email Archiving
Beyond enabling the Gwent Police IT Department to achieve a successful GroupWise to Exchange migration within the stipulated timeframe and with no data corruption, Netmail Archive brings additional benefits to the police force. It ensures that any email requested as evidence in court is produced in a quick and timely manner, in a standards-based open format, with minimal overhead or discovery cost. There are significant savings on the storage side, as well, since the majority of the data is offloaded from the Exchange server. From a compliance perspective, Netmail Archive facilitates production of email records for right of access.
The Bottom Line
"I am very pleased with the outcome of our GroupWise to Exchange migration project. Netmail Archive enabled us to move the data according to plan with no loss of email. Since the solution includes the email migration utility, it provided us with a very cost-effective migration. By having access to the old GroupWise archives and the new Exchange archives, we are now compliant with respect to FoIA, DPA, and other legislative requirements. We also have full control over what data is retained and can react quickly and efficiently if we need to produce evidence to the court. Overall, our email migration project was a success," concludes Paul Higgs, Infrastructure Services Manager at Gwent Police Authority.
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