Ringier Go Google with Cloud Technology Solutions
Ringier Axel Springer Media AG is a leading multimedia company in Central and Eastern Europe with activities in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Serbia. Based on strong and successful media brands like FAKT, BLESK, NOVÝ CAS and BLIC, Ringier Axel Springer Media AG is a dynamic association of independent enterprises. Focused on growth and digitization, the wide-ranging portfolio makes Ringier Axel Springer Media AG the region’s market leader in the segment of widely circulated tabloid dailies and one of the biggest magazine publishers.
Ringier Axel Springer Media AG is a joint venture founded by Swiss Ringier AG and German Axel Springer AG in 2010 to bundle their international activities in Central and Eastern Europe. Ringier Axel Springer Media AG extends the strong position of the two shareholdes substantially in these growth markets, with more than 100 print titles and more than 70 online offerings. Based in Zurich, Switzerland, Ringier Axel Springer Media AG is the leading media company operating in Central and Eastern Europe with revenues of EUR 414 million, an EBITDA of EUR 62 million and about 4,800 employees.
Business Need
Ringier AG operates from ten locations around the world but communication was difficult with many different e-mail, calendar systems and address domains. The company needed to improve communication and co-operation between the different divisions, as well as externally with customers and partners outside the corporate network.
Ringier decided to conduct an extensive one year pilot with Google Apps in China and Vietnam. The pilot was a great success and led to a plan to migrate all it’s employees worldwide to Google Apps. In addition to savings estimated to be 700,000 euro per year, compared with existing systems, Google Apps enables the introduction of other innovations such as instant messaging and video conferencing.
As part of the global roll out to Google Apps, a division of Ringier Axel Springer based in the Czech Republic, needed to migrate from a distributed Novell GroupWise email environment. Ringier Axel Springer CZ is the largest publisher in the Czech Repulic and runs two printing plants, Ringier Axel Springer Print Prague and Ringier Axel Springer Print Ostrava.
Solution
Google recommended Cloud Technology Solutions as the obvious migration partner for Ringier Axel Springer CZ to provide assistance and support with it’s market-leading Cloud Google Migrator migration tool-set. The services, support and advice provided by Cloud Technology Solution allows entire organisations of any size to migrate to Google Apps efficiently and with no downtime.
Working closely with Google, and the Ringier Google Apps expert team, Cloud Technology Solutions provided expert advice on how to migrate from Novell GroupWise to Google Apps, while maintaining all emails, contacts, and calendar information. A prerequisite of the migration was that it had to be achieved, in a timely and secure manner without downtime or loss of data with all emails, contacts, and calendar information. transferred to Google Apps.
Emanuel Hosnedl, CIO said:
Ringier Czech Republic used migration utility for migration of GroupWise to Google Apps. This utility was very helpful for migration of mails, appointments and contacts.
Migrating users from the current Novell GroupWise system was expected to be a complex task as the users maximised the use of calendars and contact information within the GroupWise address book, however the Cloud Google Migrator enabled this activity to be completed efficiently without any issues.
After Ringier migrated to Google Apps Ringier Axel Springer CZ took advantage of anti-spam and long-term archiving solutions from Google. Employees have also rapidly adopted other Google Apps features such as communicating with each other through instant messaging and videoconferencing.
