Outcome at a glance: The client, a federal manufacturing agency, engaged i3solutions to consolidate the more than thirty separate legacy systems behind its intranet into a single portal built on Microsoft .NET and SharePoint. i3solutions kept the existing intranet running while the new platform was developed, and the centralized system reduced administrative time and cost, increased productivity, reduced redundancy, and eliminated the costly downtime that came with maintaining 30 different systems.
Modernizing Legacy Systems with a Unified Intranet Platform
Case Study
Modernizing Legacy Systems with a
Unified Intranet Platform
The Customer
And Their Challenge
The client is a federal manufacturing agency whose intranet provides enterprise-wide on-line access to a number of the agency’s applications, including directives and manuals, the telephone directory, and current agency news and announcements, and can be accessed from PCs and strategically located kiosks throughout the agency.
The agency supported and maintained more than thirty separate legacy systems to keep its intranet up and running. It wanted to move to a centralized system that would reduce the effort required to produce and maintain the intranet, and provide a single web interface for accessing agency information.
The Solution
i3solutions took on the dual responsibility of maintaining and trouble shooting the agency’s existing system, as the new Microsoft .NET application and architecture for a single Intranet portal was developed. These activities included web page development, Intranet site enhancements, and other web-related development activities, including the conversion of manuals, publications, databases, and reports.
i3solutions implemented a customized SharePoint solution that provided the agency with a centralized system to maintain and share agency information and reduced the need for multiple data stores throughout the organization. All agency applications and information is now accessible through a single Intranet portal.
Running both tracks at once mattered. The agency could not take the intranet offline while its replacement was built, so i3solutions carried day-to-day support and troubleshooting of the aging environment while the new platform was designed and developed. The agency never had to choose between keeping the intranet running and modernizing it, and existing content such as manuals, publications, databases, and reports was converted to carry forward rather than rebuilt from scratch.
The result replaced more than thirty separately maintained systems with one centralized platform for managing and sharing agency knowledge. Information that once lived in scattered data stores is now maintained in a single place and delivered through one web interface, accessible from PCs and kiosks throughout the agency.
Technologies
Used in the Solution
The rebuilt intranet runs on a customized SharePoint platform with application components built on the Microsoft .NET Framework in ASP.NET, C#, and VB.NET. The interface is delivered in HTML5, and converted manuals and publications are published as Adobe Acrobat PDF documents.
Measurable Benefits
and Business Impact
Creating a centralized location for all agency applications and information reduced time and money spent on maintaining 30 different systems, and freed those resources for other agency work. Easy access to valuable information increased productivity and reduced redundancy. This system, built on the latest Microsoft technologies, ensured site stability and eliminated costly downtime.
Reduced administrative
time and costs
Increased productivity
Reduced redundancy
Eliminated costly down
time and ensured system stability
Frequently Asked Questions
Why replace more than thirty legacy systems with one intranet?
Each of the thirty-plus systems behind the intranet had to be separately supported and maintained just to keep it running. Consolidating them into one centralized system reduced the time and money spent on upkeep and freed that time for other agency work.
Did the old intranet stay available during the rebuild?
Yes. i3solutions took on the dual responsibility of maintaining and troubleshooting the existing system while the new platform was developed, so agency staff kept access to directives, manuals, the telephone directory, and agency news throughout.
What does the new intranet run on?
A customized SharePoint solution with application components built on the Microsoft .NET Framework in ASP.NET, C#, and VB.NET, delivered in HTML5, with converted manuals and publications published as Adobe Acrobat PDF documents.
What changed for agency staff day to day?
All agency applications and information are now accessible through a single intranet portal from PCs and strategically located kiosks throughout the agency. Easy access to information increased productivity and reduced redundancy, and the new platform eliminated costly downtime.
If your organization is maintaining dozens of legacy systems to keep one capability alive, an assessment can show you what consolidation would take. It maps which systems can fold into a single platform, what the sequence looks like, and where the maintenance burden drops first.
Consolidating a pile of separately maintained systems is mostly a question of what can be retired and what has to survive the move intact. A senior architect will go through what you are running, separate the two, and tell you where the real dependencies are hiding.
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