Case Study: The University of Minnesota
At the University of Minnesota, the mission of Auxiliary Services is to provide departments with goods and services at a quality-for-cost ratio not consistently available from the business community. Auxiliary Services must be constantly interacting with academic, administrative, and student groups throughout the evaluation, planning, delivery, and of competitively priced services
Prior to Creative Business Solutions arrival, Auxiliary Services was experiencing several challenges with the existing Lotus Domino environment:
> The Domino administrator could not register new users
> Email Addressing and routing was confusing and difficult
> Needed to Standardize the Notes Client environment
> Calendaring/Scheduling was not being used due to inconsistent client configuration
> End Users required more training than was currently available
> Consolidation of Domino servers onto the IBM AS/400 midrange computer
Creative Business Solutions, an IBM and Lotus Premier Partner, was brought in to solve the Domino problems. Creative Business Solutions consultants started by stabilizing Domino on the existing IBM AS/400. They then assisted Auxiliary Services with implementation of several partitioned Domino servers on the AS/400. The purpose of the partitioning was to split Domino workloads between email, a Domino-based e-commerce application, and Domino applications serving specific departmental needs. This also utilized the high-speed backbone of the AS/400 for very rapid replication cycles.
The Lotus Notes client was then standardized to resolve problems with calendaring/scheduling, and email addressing was simplified. Creative Business Solutions built a web-based interface to the Domino server so that Auxiliary Services personnel and clients can securely access their mail from anywhere at anytime using a web browser.
After the initial issues were resolved, Creative Business Solutions was tasked to upgrade Auxiliary Services and underlying departments to version R5 of Domino for AS/400. They started by implementing Domino for AS/400 R5 on a newly purchased IBM AS/400 720. Tests were performed so ensure that the existing mail and application environments would not be disrupted by the upgrade.
Once tests were completed, user mailboxes and applications were moved into the Domino for AS/400 R5 server environment. Next, users were converted to the R5 Notes client and initial R5 client training was done.
Nederloe states, “Creative Business Solutions not only helps us with our processes and programs, they educate us as well. The CBS employees we have worked with are some of the best in the industry.”
Creative Business Solutions created and customized training material for the Notes R5 client that was specifically tailored for Auxiliary Services Lotus Notes environment. Creative Business Solutions consultants conducted training sessions for Auxiliary Services users and several underlying departments.
Creative Business Solutions continues to provide ongoing consulting services to University of Minnesota Auxiliary Services, including application development, and sessions focused on keeping Auxiliary Services staff up to date on the latest advances in IBM/Lotus products.
Benefits to Auxiliary Service
> Improved Reliability
24x7 monitoring of the server environments and the AS/400 server platform provide a robust environment for Domino and Lotus Notes.
> Decreased Costs
Consolidation of several Domino servers in single AS/400 platform reduces need for administration and support of multiple server environments.
> Robust Application and Messaging Environment
Domino R5 provides an environment in which Auxiliary Services departments can create web and Notes-based collaborative applications.
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