Northcliffe Media has modelled its IT
infrastructure using
VMware in preparation for upgrading its Microsoft Exchange
software.
The regional newspaper publisher is following the growing trend
of using virtualisation technology to reduce the cost of building
and maintaining expensive software test environments before
implementing a major project.
Northcliffe used the VMware virtualisation server to build a
scaled model of its legacy Exchange 5.5 e-mail system, which
supports more than 4,500 full-time staff in 32 centres, to identify
potential problems with the upgrade.
Bola Rotibi, principal analyst at Ovum, said that virtualisation
was the next logical step in testing, as the technology becomes
more viable. "It makes more sense economically to use
virtualisation. Virtualising the test environment allows users to
run what-if scenarios much more cost-effectively," she said.
Kieran Head, project manager at Northcliffe Media, said the
scale model running in VMware allowed the IT team to run a proof of
concept project to test how to conduct a roll-out.
The company also installed a Zantaz e-mail archiving system in
the virtual model to check how it integrated with Microsoft
Exchange. Zantaz allows Northcliffe to compress 650Gbytes of e-mail
data by 50%.
The proof of concept project highlighted one problem area, said
Head. "One site had already upgraded to Exchange 2003, and we found
in our tests that we will need to roll this site back to Exchange
5.5 in order to integrate it with our Windows infrastructure," he
said.
Head is planning to begin Northcliffe's Exchange migration this
week, starting with the problem site. The project is expected to be
completed by March 2008.