Anglicare WA consulted Avantgarde Technologies to upgrade our corporate email systems to Exchange Server 2013. Avantgarde came in and ran what they called a “technology workshop” with our IT department to capture our business requirements around email such litigation and retention, business continuity, and disaster recovery. Avantgarde also ran us through all the features and functionality of Exchange Server 2013 allowing us to pick and choose what features we wish to implement up front. The knowledge demonstrated in this workshop by the consultant was exemplary.
From the information gathered during the workshop, Avantgarde put together a design which they ran us through in detail answering all our questions and concerns. When we were happy with the proposed design, Avantgarde put together a project plan. This document clearly listed the deliverables based on our requirements put forward during the workshop, any project constraints and exclusions, a responsibilities matrix, risks and assumptions as well as a work breakdown of all the tasks which need to be completed throughout the project. Avantgarde gave us the opportunity to perform some of the tasks in the work breakdown ourselves thereby enabling us utilise skillsets that we already possess within our team and meet project budgetary requirements.
During project implementation, Avantgarde followed the project plan they put in place and kept us updated on progress throughout implementation by getting us to sign off against each project milestone throughout the project lifecycle. The new infrastructure was built alongside our existing email servers to insure no disruption to the business while the various configuration tasks were undertaken. When the new infrastructure was ready, Avantgarde put together a migration strategy to carefully migrate our 600 users across to the new Exchange 2013 infrastructure over a weekend. The migration was successful with zero impact to business services during this period.
After the new Exchange 2013 environment was built, before performing project handover, Avantgarde ran a training session with the IT department at Anglicare WA. This gave us confidence with the skillsets we require to administer and maintain an Exchange 2010 environment.
As the IT Manager of Anglicare WA, I was very impressed with the work put forward by Avantgarde Technologies on this engagement. The quality of the solution met our requirements spot on and project delivery was outstanding. I would not hesitate to recommend Avantgarde’s professional services team to other companies.
