Challenge
Texas A&M at Qatar evaluated its existing Exchange 2010 system and realized that the system was quickly approaching the end of its life. It was time to upgrade to the latest version of the Microsoft platform — Exchange 2016 — and migrate its existing 2,500 user mailboxes. One of the major challenges was the fact that the university in Qatar was eight time zones away from Netmail’s head office in Montreal, Canada, so the project had to be very tightly choreographed between the Netmail team and the personnel in Qatar.
Solution
Like most universities, shrinking budgets have forced Texas A&M at Qatar to develop its own internal expertise when it comes to designing new systems; but with a mission critical service like Exchange needing a complete re-design and upgrade, bringing in outside experts was an easy decision. In the end, Texas A&M university in Qatar selected Netmail based primarily on Netmail’s thorough proposal, the qualifications of the Netmail team, Netmail’s experience in the field of education, and the cost of the project.
Results
Once selected for the project, Netmail helped the university evaluate load balancers, add layers of security, and ensure multiple backups to the system, as well as design the new Exchange 2016 system. “At the end of the day, it was all about a successful migration,” according to the university. “Our users didn’t even notice that the migration was taking place. We are really happy with the outcome of the project.”
