Client: Siemens Healthineers AG

Siemens Healthineers AG is the parent company of several companies that, as a group, are one of the largest healthcare providers worldwide, employing around 53,000 people in over 70 countries. It successfully launched on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange on March 16, 2018. The headquarters in Germany is in Erlangen. In the 2017/18 fiscal year, revenue of 13.4 billion euros was generated. Every day, about five million patients worldwide benefit from their innovative products and services in the fields of diagnostic and therapeutic imaging, laboratory diagnostics and molecular medicine, as well as digital health services and hospital management offerings.

Initial Situation and Challenge

“Move to the cloud” – was also the motto of Siemens Healthineers. A first step was the outsourcing of Microsoft Exchange to the cloud. As part of this, over 70,000 mailboxes worldwide had to be migrated from Microsoft Exchange On-Premise (original email server) to Microsoft Exchange Online (cloud).
The main goal of the project was to provide a “Digital Workplace” for employees worldwide to enhance the user experience. Furthermore, the switch to Microsoft Exchange was intended to optimize ongoing operating costs for licenses and infrastructure.

Project Goal and Challenges in the Exchange Online Rollout for Siemens Healthineers

The advantages of Exchange Online become visible very quickly – employees can, for example, access their mailbox while on the go without burdening the company network. Administrators are relieved of time constraints as the management of their own infrastructure becomes significantly easier. In addition, MS Exchange Online offers the end-user the advantage of a larger Outlook mailbox (100 GB) and provides additional security for the end-user’s data thanks to multi-factor authentication.
At the beginning of the Exchange Online migration, there was a noticeably heterogeneous mailbox landscape. The particular challenge was to migrate the Siemens Healthineers mailboxes, which were located at different infrastructure sites – on-premise as well as in the Siemens Office 365 tenant – ultimately into the Siemens Healthineers Office 365 tenant.
In addition to some restrictions and special planning efforts, one of the biggest challenges was to carry out the migration within the given tight schedule.
Because any delay would result in exorbitant costs for the “staging infrastructure”, i.e., for the existing rented servers of a third-party data center.

Solution

From the very beginning, digatus was able to contribute to a successful project flow within the given timeframe. The digatus project team accompanied the transition to Exchange Online and provided the following functions:

Rollout Transition Manager
As this was a global transition, it was particularly important to plan it carefully and with consideration for regional and department-specific needs, to communicate the planning to the respective Siemens Healthineers coordinators, and ultimately to migrate the mailboxes. A main focus was on ensuring that mailboxes with specific properties, such as dependencies on other mailboxes, were not immediately migrated, but initially postponed and subsequently treated differently.

Technical Transition Manager
After the Rollout Transition Manager had prepared the migration of the mailboxes, the Technical Transition Manager planned the migration in waves. Before the actual migration, the next step was to check whether the mailboxes met the technical requirements to be migrated.
Among other things, an Office 365 license had to be assigned to the account to be migrated, and the same had to be synchronized in Azure Active Directory. Once the described prerequisites for the technical readiness of the mailboxes were met, the migration to Exchange Online could be carried out.

“In such a large-scale project, absolutely seamless collaboration and cross-functional professional competence within the project team are essential. The resilience and competence of the digatus colleagues were important success factors for the successful implementation of the Exchange Online migration.”

Peter Doma – Head of Modern Workplace, Siemens Healthineers AG

Hypercare Lead
The role of the Hypercare Lead was primarily responsible for ensuring that the service transition phase was supported by hypercare services. For example, this includes both the creation of reports on incoming tickets and the function as the main contact person for any escalations.
A special added value was created by creating wiki articles and knowledge base articles (e.g., synchronization of email and mobile phone, status of the mailbox migration process, troubleshooting after migration) which could be handed over to First Level Support after the project.

Project Management
Throughout the entire project, project management was able to contribute to the implementation and consistent application of standardized project management methods. For example, agile methods were introduced, monitored, and controlled using innovative applications such as Microsoft Teams and Project.
In addition, project management was able to significantly relieve the project management/team through administrative and operational support (e.g., risk management, coordination of project activities, setting up and maintaining the project plan).
Likewise, efficient and effective collaboration was ensured by promoting exchange, coordination, and motivation to retain project staff.

Customer Benefits

The migration to MS Exchange Online was successfully completed within the given tight timeframe because the digatus project team in this constellation was able to optimally contribute the multitude of professional, technical, and methodological requirements.
Due to the long-standing cooperation between digatus and Siemens Healthineers, the consultants were able to quickly settle into their roles and the corporate environment. Last but not least, the great mutual trust and consistently transparent way of working led to project success despite some challenges.