Company Profile
Schneider Electric is the global specialist in energy management and automation. With revenues of ~€27 billion in FY2015, Schneider’s 160,000+ employees serve customers in over 100 countries. Ultimately, Schneider helps customers manage their energy and process in ways that are safe, reliable, efficient, and sustainable. From the simplest of switches to complex operational systems, Schneider’s technology, software, and services improve the way its customers manage and automate their operations. Schneider’s connected technologies reshape industries, transform cities and enrich lives. At Schneider Electric, they call this Life Is On.
Business Drivers
Historically, Schneider Electric’s IT environment has primarily included heavy, on-premises legacy systems. And as a result, collaboration across the enterprise and connectivity from remote sites is quite difficult. One of the widely used application development platforms at Schneider was IBM Lotus Notes. Over 190 servers worldwide hosted 65,000 Lotus Notes applications. Additionally, these said apps had facilitated some of Schneider’s key business processes.
The Challenge: IBM Lotus Notes to Box Migration
In 2014, Schneider decided to retire Lotus Notes as its application development and mailing platform. Another component of Schneider’s IT strategy was the introduction of several modern platforms, including Box for cloud-based content management. But getting content out of its on-premises systems proved to be challenging. It would be a large migration, including IBM Lotus Notes as well as nearly 900 IBM QuickR sites
“We needed to move the files out of Lotus Notes and our QuickR-based Document Libraries and into Box while maintaining the security and structure that our users are used to,” said Tushar Joshi, Global Project Manager for Schneider’s migration project. “None of the migration tools that we had discovered were able to support Lotus Notes. We needed to have a specific connector for that system and it was not available anywhere.”
The Solution
On a recommendation from Box, Schneider Electric was introduced to DryvIQ – a powerful solution architected to perform enterprise-grade file migrations.
“We had several conversations with the DryvIQ team and they discovered a growing need for their tool to integrate with IBM’s enterprise content management platforms. They agreed to build connectors for those systems so we could move forward with our migration,” Joshi said. “It’s a great addition to the tool, and no other solution could offer that.”
Once DryvIQ was able to tightly integrate with IBM Lotus Notes and QuickR, the software’s out-of-the-box file transfer capabilities enabled Schneider Electric to fully automate its IBM Lotus Notes to Box migration.
The Results
After six months of moving content, Schneider was able to shut down all of its QuickR sites. The company has since been working to migrate its Lotus Notes databases to Box, and is slated to have the project complete and servers decommissioned by the spring of 2017 – at which point Schneider expects to see big savings in its IT budget.
“By migrating these legacy systems to Box, we are expecting to save more than $1 million per year,” Joshi said.
In addition to the cost savings, Box’s EFSS capabilities have simplified file storage and sharing for Schneider’s users across the globe. “Our users are seeing the same content in Box that they’ve been working on for years, but now they can access that data anywhere, from any device without needing to connect to our local servers,” Joshi said.
Looking Ahead
After a smooth migration from its legacy IBM platforms, Schneider Electric plans to utilize DryvIQ to migrate its remaining on-premises systems and shared drives to Box as well.
“All-in-all, DryvIQ has been able to fully automate our migration process, and we’ve never had any major technical issues,” Joshi said. “It has been a great partnership for us.”
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