Sydney Water dumps GroupWise

Sydney Water has decided to migrate its email platform from Novell's GroupWise to Microsoft Outlook/Exchange and is looking for a contractor to help implement the change.

(Water supply image by recoverling, CC2.0)

The organisation's email and mail archiving components had "reached the end of their functional life" and were ready for replacement, according to background information on the request for tender released on NSW's tendering site.

GroupWise would be replaced by Exchange to create a "feature-enhanced" messaging platform across Sydney Water, the document said. Quest Archive Manager will be used for mail archiving.

The contractor would plan, design and build the Outlook/Exchange infrastructure and migrate the over 3000 email users at the Parramatta head office and at Homebush. The last task was to implement Quest and migrate around 1.2TB of existing archived storage. The contractor was also expected to provide training for technical and support staff. The tender closes on 16 July.

In total across all its sites, Sydney Water has over 4000 mailboxes in GroupWise, with 675GB of mail inside.

Sydney Water CIO Tim Catley has been ramping up Sydney Water's discretionary project spend, recovering from drastic cuts in the organisation's IT budget after a failed customer information and billing system project.