Sprawling Email Infrastructure Creates IT Management Burden

• Faster path to project success
• Lowered email costs by 38 percent
• Improved reliability of email services

Situation

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) was organized under the name War Relief Services at the height of World War II. Its original charter was to help resettle refugees and care for those whose lives and livelihoods were devastated by the conflict. Today, CRS seeks to break the cycles of poverty and violence that affect the lives of millions of people around the globe. Through its network of 151 field offices, it teams with local partners to deliver agriculture training, education and healthcare outreach, disaster response coordination, microfinance services, and much more.

Sprawling Email Infrastructure Creates IT Management Burden

Headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, CRS has approximately 5,000 employees in nearly 100 countries. For CRS, email is an indispensable tool. Staff members depend on this service to handle everything from corresponding with donors to directing aid efforts in the critical hours following a natural disaster or other emergency.

Throughout its history, the organization has needed to rapidly set up operations—often in remote locales—in response to emerging crises. As a result, its email infrastructure has become highly decentralized over the years. Some offices maintained on-premises instances of Microsoft Exchange Server; others relied on local hosting providers to access Exchange Server. And, for expedience, staff in regions prone to power outages and other threats to server reliability were permitted to use public web-based email services for day-to-day business activities.

In addition, in 2010, the CRS IT team initiated the migration of 850 email accounts to Microsoft Exchange Online. But even these accounts were spread across five separate instances of the application, which complicated email management.

Recently, IT leaders identified the use of 76 distinct simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) domains across the organization. Maintaining this infrastructure consumed a substantial amount of time and money. In fact, executives found that IT administrators in certain regions spent 40 to 50 percent of their time each week troubleshooting email issues. Additionally, the organization spent US$4 per employee to provide email service. That figure only accounted for software licensing and hardware expenses, but not labor costs.

“The management of all of these different domains was untenable,” says Dan Carr, Director of System Operations, Maintenance, and Support at Catholic Relief Services. “The executive team couldn’t send a broadcast email message to all employees and expect that everyone would get it. If the email message was marked urgent, we’d immediately receive a flood of help-desk calls from people saying that they hadn’t received the email, and that they had only found out about the message by talking to colleagues. We spent 15 to 20 hours each week responding to these kinds of email issues.”

Collaboration Challenges

Also, without a single email infrastructure, the organization lacked the benefit of a global address list. Employees in Kenya, for example, were not able to easily find the email address of a coworker in Europe or the United States through their email client. Instead, they typically searched their email Inbox, hoping to find a message sent from the person that they needed to reach.

To simplify IT management and promote greater employee productivity, CRS wanted to find a way to provide email service to its 5,000 employees through a single system. At the same time, Carr and other executives were eager to lower the cost to deliver this mission-critical application. In evaluating a technology partner, IT leaders considered the complexity of the organization’s IT architecture and its own experience with large-scale IT projects. Executives knew that CRS needed assistance from a partner with deep solution-area expertise, a rigorous deployment methodology, and a network of global resources.

Solution

Executives decided to adopt Microsoft Online Services, a set of communication and productivity tools, including Microsoft Exchange Online, that are delivered as a monthly subscription service. In the fall of 2010, CRS reached out to Microsoft Services, a global team of advisors and technical professionals dedicated to helping organizations make the most of their investments in Microsoft technologies. “We knew right away, based on the complexity of our email environment, that Microsoft Services was the only viable candidate for the job,” says Carr. CRS engaged the Microsoft Consulting Services team, a unit of Microsoft Services, for assistance in transitioning email accounts for 4,525 employees to Microsoft Exchange Online. Microsoft Consulting Services provides fixed-price engagements for organizations looking to migrate 2,400 users or more to Microsoft Online Services solutions, including Exchange Online.

Architecture Assessment and Strategic Planning

Microsoft Consulting Services adheres to a methodology that incorporates specialized cloud migration tools, processes, and best practices across three distinct phases: plan, prepare, and migrate. This approach has been used in the deployment of Microsoft Online Services offerings to more than 2 million people worldwide over the past several years.

As a first step in working with CRS, the Microsoft Consulting Services team organized a strategy briefing with key CRS stakeholders, including leaders of the business and IT organizations. This meeting provided an opportunity for Microsoft consultants to better understand the organization’s long-term objectives and align the solution delivery plan to those priorities—while also helping coordinate efforts between internal groups at CRS.

Next, consultants from Microsoft performed a comprehensive technical review of the CRS messaging infrastructure. Consultants focused on identifying and documenting necessary changes to the Active Directory environment at CRS, in addition to any required changes to client computers. As part of this review and planning phase, the Microsoft Consulting Services team worked with CRS to outline strategic considerations,such as which CRS regions should be transitioned first and how much data could be moved during each migration session.

Another key component of the Microsoft Consulting Services methodology is the use of a meticulously crafted project communication plan. Consultants from Microsoft drafted a set of documents for CRS stakeholders to use at each step in the project. This included a 70-page master plan document for IT leaders and step-by-step instructions for employees on how to connect to their new email accounts. “It was invaluable to us to have Microsoft deliver a ready-made communications plan at the start of the project,” says Carr. “I can trace back a lot of the success that we enjoyed to being able to work from such a thorough plan, which was based on Microsoft real-world experience in helping customers around the world optimize their email environments.”

Deployment: The Need for a Flexible Approach

As CRS experienced firsthand, the consultants on the Microsoft Consulting Services team are experts at tailoring the methodology they use to meet the unique requirements of each deployment scenario. For example, as a first step in preparing to migrate mailboxes to Exchange Online, CRS worked with the Microsoft team to validate employee profile data across the entire CRS organization. “We quickly realized that we needed to find a better way to collect and verify basic data, like each employee’s email address and whether PCs in a given environment met the minimum specifications,” says Carr.

To overcome this obstacle, Igor Nikolovski, Network Architect at CRS and the technical lead for the migration project, worked with Microsoft consultants to develop a database query tool. CRS used this application to efficiently compile and analyze user account information for each office. As Figure 1 illustrates, the organization also used this tool to automatically generate daily status reports to give executives a clear view of the progress of the project. “The team from Microsoft went above and beyond to adapt the plan to fit our circumstances,” says Nikolovski. “From the very beginning, we knew we had a partner that we could count on every step of the way.”

In another example of how the Microsoft team assisted CRS in navigating unforeseen difficulties, consultants advised on how to migrate user accounts in regions where low bandwidth was a problem. CRS faced the challenge of how to enable employees in remote field offices to move large amounts of data stored in archive folders to Exchange Online, despite slow Internet connectivity speeds in these regions. To ensure rapid migration velocity, the Microsoft team recommended that CRS avoid moving archive folders as part of the initial deployment. Instead, employees were asked to manually transfer data from their personal archive folders to their new mailboxes in Exchange Online. “With input from Microsoft on how to optimize deployment in low-bandwidth environments, we trimmed days off this phase of the project, while minimizing the impact on local networks, so our people could stay productive,” says Carr.

Connection with an External Deployment Partner

CRS also needed to migrate 850 email accounts that were already running on five separate instances of Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite. The Microsoft Consulting Services group connected CRS with BitTitan, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network that offers a proprietary email migration tool called MigrationWiz. This tool helped simplify the process of consolidating Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite accounts on a single SMTP domain. “We were very impressed by the effort that the Microsoft Consulting Services team made in connecting us with an external partner to handle a portion of the work,” says Carr. “Microsoft clearly demonstrated to us that they were committed to helping us complete our email migration project in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible.”

In late 2011, CRS completed activation of all remaining email accounts in Exchange Online. Now, CRS employees can access a global address list to locate and contact colleagues around the world in a matter of clicks. Employees also enjoy mailboxes with greater storage capacity, which greatly reduces the need to perform periodic archiving operations. And IT administrators spend less time managing multiple SMTP domains and troubleshooting resultant email issues.

Benefits

As a result of teaming with Microsoft Services to assist with its agency-wide email migration initiative, CRS was able to quickly adapt to unique deployment challenges and transition 4,525 user accounts to Microsoft Exchange Online with minimal disruption to email service. “We couldn’t have completed such a large-scale, multicountry email migration project, especially with as low an error rate as we experienced, without help from Microsoft Consulting Services,” says Carr.

Reduced Risk, Surer Path to Project Success

By working with the Microsoft Consulting Services team, which brought both hands-on deployment expertise and connections to an extensive network of partner resources, CRS minimized the complexity of its migration project and avoid costly delays.

For example, with access to a comprehensive communication plan developed by Microsoft, CRS was able to move forward confidently with the migration of user accounts in even its most remote field offices. In addition, the organization benefitted from expert guidance on how to efficiently transition email accounts in areas with slow Internet connectivity. Finally, through its use of MigrationWiz from Microsoft partner BitTitan, CRS quickly consolidated its existing Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite environment on a single domain. “With every new or unexpected challenge we faced, Microsoft consultants were there with a creative solution to keep our migration project moving forward,” says Carr.

Lowered Email Service Delivery Cost by 38 Percent

CRS conducted a comparative analysis of the cost to provide email service using on-premises infrastructure versus using Microsoft Exchange Online. Executives found that, by eliminating the need to maintain physical servers, and by reducing software licensing expenses, the organization has slashed the cost to deliver email service from US$4 per employee to US$2.50 per employee. This represents a total cost reduction of 38 percent. This figure does not account for savings related to the increased IT labor efficiency that CRS has experienced. “Before making the move to Exchange Online, IT staff in some of our field offices spent up to 50 percent of their time on email issues,” says Carr. “Now, they have 15 to 20 hours back each week to focus on higher-value initiatives, projects like improving network security or enabling greater worker mobility.”

Improved Reliability of a Mission-Critical Application

Employees in any CRS regional or field office can now take advantage of a highly reliable email service, which they can access through their PC or on the go through a mobile device. All they need is a standard Internet connection. Through such features as a global address list and the ability to create distribution groups that link CRS employees anywhere in the world, staff can now connect with greater ease. “Email is essential in coordinating the kinds of humanitarian services that we provide,” says Carr. “Now, regardless of where our people serve, they have access to world-class communication tools to help carry out the CRS mission.”

Microsoft Services

Microsoft Services is a global team of professionals who are dedicated to helping customers maximize the value of their investment in Microsoft software. Microsoft Services touches customers more than 715 million times a year, helping them plan, deploy, support and optimize our technologies. They also work closely with Microsoft Partners by sharing their technological expertise and product knowledge on a regular basis.

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