|
Project Background
Prior to this migration, all processing
was being done on an AS400 model 9402/400 at the plant in Graham, Texas. The Graham facility also served as a network hub
for the connections to Europe and Atlanta.
Atlanta Corporate Offices
|
|
|
In order to remain competitive due to
several corporate initiatives, the decision was made to restructure the company by scaling
back those operations at the Texas facility that were considered corporate-level. This would mean centralizing several operations
at the corporate headquarters in Atlanta. The
issue of how to coordinate and execute a move of IT operations was considered paramount to
the company’s success.
System Conversion, Ltd. was contacted
to provide a proposal to assist in the migration. The
proposal that was submitted for approval consisted of not one but four possible scenarios. These scenarios ranged from moving the existing
AS400 over a long weekend, to purchasing and pre-positioning a new AS400 to take over the
processing load. The proposal included
leasing options and transportation scenarios that gave eMag
|
|
Solutions several avenues of approach to select from,
based on budgetary and processing requirements. eMag Solutions selected the
scenario whereby they would purchase a new AS400 and preposition it in Atlanta. This allowed for testing of communications and
more importantly, PRMS, prior to coordinating the cutover of production processing.
This migration of operations did not
just center on moving the computer, it really centered on migrating processing
responsibility. Up to this time, all
responsibility had fallen on the Technical team at Graham.
None of those employees migrated with the operations to Atlanta. Therefore, there were several areas where
information needed to be migrated as well to ensure the successful processing at the new
location. Cooperation between the 2 locations
was paramount to the project’s success.
Project Planning
Key members of the SCL team traveled to
Graham, Texas with the VP of Operations and the Director of IT to determine the scope of
project. An analysis was conducted of the
sizing requirements for the new AS400 and a site survey was conducted to determine the
requirements for workstations and printers.
It was discovered that connectivity to
PRMS was through PRMS View and a TELNET product called NetTerm. eMag did not allow their users to connect
via Client Access because they were concerned with the effect to system overhead on the
older machine.
One
major decision that was reached was to convert eMag’s existing communications
infrastructure to a one wire – one protocol architecture. During the site survey, it was discovered that eMag
used a combination of Twinax, Ethernet and Token Ring frame types and that the protocols
were a mixture of SNA and
|
