ABOUT THE CLIENT

The University Hospital of Bonn (UKB) is one of Germany’s leading university hospitals: it comprises 40 clinical departments and 34 institutes, employs approximately 9,200 staff members, and treats over 500,000 patients annually, including approximately 50,000 emergency patients. The UKB ranks first among university hospitals in North Rhine-Westphalia on the Focus hospital list and has the second-highest case-mix index in Germany.

For an institution of this size, a high-performance, secure email and groupware infrastructure is not just a nice-to-have, but the foundation for smooth hospital operations: Thousands of employees in medicine, nursing, administration, and research must be able to communicate and collaborate reliably at all times.

BACKGROUND & CHALLENGE

The UKB’s management decided to modernize the email system. The main reason for this was to future-proof the email system. Cost and security considerations also played a role, leading to the decision to switch to Microsoft Exchange. Together with its IT business partner H&G, the UKB set out to find a suitable solution.

H&G turned to BCC to find a solution capable of migrating emails and additional content such as calendars, contacts, and tasks, and one that could handle encrypted emails. The quality and speed of the migration were also key factors, as was the need to launch the migration project as quickly as possible. In addition to deploying active emails in Exchange, there was also a requirement to promptly migrate years’ worth of archived emails from HCL Domino.

“Our recipe for success: H&G’s excellent technical implementation combined with BCC’s outstanding project management. For several months now, we’ve been running entirely on Microsoft Exchange with Outlook as the front end, primarily because of its excellent integration capabilities with other Microsoft applications. These results are much better than planned.”

Dirk-Oliver Granath Head of IT Service Department, University Hospital Bonn

THE SOLUTION

BCC MigrationEngine: Highly Automated Migration with Over 25 Years of Experience

The BCC MigrationEngine is based on over 25 years of development experience in the collaboration sector. This server-based tool enables highly automated, fast, and secure migration of emails, calendars, contacts, and tasks to and from HCL Domino, Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft 365 environments.

BCC created a comprehensive project plan that included all necessary tasks and BCC resources for the migration. This plan was shared with the UKB; additional tasks planned by the UKB were consolidated into a single project plan and updated jointly throughout the project.

The MigrationEngine is a server-based process that requires no additional infrastructure or technical IDs. Technical staff do not have access to sensitive data during the migration. The MigrationEngine is also highly configurable, features rules as well as inclusion and exclusion criteria, and sends detailed reports to the administrator in the event of problems. The entire migration process is comprehensively logged and made available in the form of statistical reports in Excel format as well as technical logs for detailed analysis.

The migration was to proceed with as little disruption as possible for employees. After consulting with the UKB, it was decided to migrate the email and calendar data in two phases: Phase 1 covered the emails from the past year up to the migration date in September, and Phase 2 covered the remaining emails into the Exchange archive.

The Microsoft consultants at H&G successfully implemented a modern on-premises Exchange environment at the UKB, thereby expanding the UKB’s expertise in working with Microsoft groupware solutions. First, H&G worked with the UKB to assess the feasibility of an Exchange environment as part of a comprehensive and in-depth consultation. Based on these findings, they developed and implemented a concept for a highly available, geographically redundant Exchange architecture: They installed and tested the new environment, seamlessly integrated the Exchange organization into the existing message flow via existing MTA solutions, and implemented a well-thought-out access concept for both stationary and mobile devices.

During the coexistence phase between Notes and Exchange, H&G and BCC worked closely together to prepare and successfully execute the migration, which was divided into several batches. Since some UKB employees were already using Exchange while others were still using Domino, the UKB decided to additionally implement the BCC Coexistence Gateway FreeBusy Tool to enable calendar queries from both platforms.

Finally, H&G provided extensive support to UKB’s internal IT team as they transitioned to the new administrative and operational processes, ensuring the sustainable and trouble-free operation of the Exchange environment beyond the end of the project.

RESULTS & ADDED VALUE

Fully migrated to Exchange, with full continuity of historical data

Upon completion of the project, the UKB successfully removed all Domino mail servers, and users are pleased to be working with the modern Outlook application running on Exchange at its data center in Bonn. Users report that they are using the Outlook client with great success, while continuing to have full access to their old emails and calendars, which were previously stored in HCL Domino.

“The migration from Domino Notes to Exchange Outlook was one of our key initiatives to enable the ongoing digital transformation of the University Hospital of Bonn. BCC helped us use its MigrationEngine to successfully complete the migration while meeting all of our specific and detailed requirements.”

Dirk-Oliver Granath Head of IT Service Department, University Hospital Bonn 

Because the migration was performed with such a high level of data integrity, the Outlook version of legacy Domino emails looks exactly the same as it did in Notes, and all historical data remains fully accessible. Even encrypted Domino emails are displayed in Outlook as encrypted PDF files.

CUSTOMER PROFILE

The UKB treats approximately 500,000 patients annually, employs about 9,200 staff members, and has total assets of 1.8 billion euros. In addition to the 3,500 medical and dental students, 550 people are trained each year in a wide range of healthcare professions. The UKB ranks first among university hospitals in North Rhine-Westphalia on the Focus hospital list and has the second-highest case-mix index (case severity) in Germany. In 2022 and 2023, the F.A.Z. Institute recognized the UKB as Germany’s most sought-after employer and a training champion among public hospitals in Germany.