Business Situation
In January 2004, Hannover Re decided to undertake a migration of its existing Windows and Exchange environment. The decision to migrate was to

• standardize and consolidate the technology environment
• drive business efficiency and IT effectiveness;
• be able to better support and manage users and groups from around the world;
• collaborate and leverage common tools, processes, training, and technology across the organization
• use improved functionality within the Windows and Exchange platforms
• draw upon improved information-sharing capabilities
• access the Global Directory

The company also wanted to ensure that the current environment had high levels of stability prior to a major upgrade of its current ERP implementation.

Solution
The organization implemented the Windows migration with Avanade over several phases: 1) project planning; 2) pilot migration; and 3) rollout to the remainder of the organization. The pilot program was designed to migrate all users over to the new Windows platform by June 2005 with the understanding that a majority of the work around the Windows platform would be completed in January 2005.

For the Exchange platform, the organization planned on deploying Exchange in the latter half of 2004 and continuing through the first six months of 2005. As of June 1 2005, all users were migrated over to the new platform.

Results
A key benefit Hannover Re identified was the reduction in time-to-benefits. By using Avanade, the organization believes it was able to complete the migration to Exchange 2003 12 months faster than it would have without Avanade. Through a faster migration, Hannover Re was able to realize key benefits associated with the migration to Exchange 2003 — savings from server consolidation, improved Exchange availability, and better mobile and remote access — a year earlier than it would have realized without Avanade.