Case Study – Migration from Windows Small Business Server 2003

Executive Summary:
Local real estate association (Josephine County & Douglas County) was ready to move from their current Windows Small Business Server 2003 setup to a cloud based Software as a Service (SaaS) application for member management. Their previous Managed Service Provider (MSP) had told them they were too small to continue supporting and they came to Farmhouse Networking seeking guidance on the migration process:

• Work with regional support services to facilitate the migration
• Archive current management system data to offsite storage
• Bring association into PCI Compliance

Challenges:
Association’s recent change of MSP had left them in a state of PCI Non-Compliance with a Windows Small Business Server 2003 based server hosting file shares, Line-of-Business (LoB) application and domain services. Their LoB application was costing them thousands of dollars per year in comparison to the nearest SaaS spplication competitor. The association’s regional office supplied free technical support which was hard to get ahold of and unresponsive to requests to move forward with the migration even though it was the regional offices suggestion.

Solution:
Interfaced with the LoB application to determine the best course of archival of data for any possible future audits. Worked with the SaaS application vendors to create plan of action to migrate the assocation data to their systems. Connected with regional support to archive the data in their data center. Developed plan of action to remove LoB application from servers, repurpose Windows Server 2008 R2 database server as new local server for all services and decommision Windows Small Business Server 2003 based server.

Results:
Association was able to seamlessly migrate their member data to the SaaS application and saved thousands of dollars each year in the process. Aging Windows Small Business Server 2003 based server was successfully decommissioned and replaced with Windows Server 2008 R2 to host file shares and domain services. Farmhouse Networking took over network management of the association which brought them into PCI compliance with managed antivirus, managed updates and documented network security practices.