Rennie Grove Hospice: Sitefinity and Site Migration & Hosting

Migration from Existing hosting supplier to IDS Logic Managed hosting space
About the Client

“Rennie Grove Hospice are a UK based charity that specialises in end of life care for people of all ages. Located in several sites in the south they rely heavily on donations and the good will of the community. Critical to fundraising is their online presence. Securing and ensuring it is maintained so that the organisation is available 24/7 is critical to their ability to carry out their work and support.”

Brief

The Rennie Grove site is built upon the Progress Sitefinity Platform. Our client required a new technology partner who could migrate, host, test, support and maintain their primary fund raising asset.

There was a short term need to manage this process in an expedited manner to secure the site and provide time to allow our client time to review and consider their medium and long term options for how to evolve the site.

Our Approach:

On the face of it, this looks like a straightforward task and to some extent that is the case.

With the application of a thorough site audit, a highly experienced team and carefully managed and communicated plan it is entirely possible to provide a smooth and efficient experience.

Not every hosting environment is configured or works in exactly the same way and there is the potential for unpredictable results to occur. That’s why a pre-migration review and assessment is critical to the success of any migration.

Our team worked with our client to agree a site review to ensure every key front and back end requirement was captured and logged. This formed the bedrock of our migration process. It provided for a QA and test framework which we could employ post migration and gave our client confidence and a clear pathway to ensure success.

In addition we worked closely with our client and ensured through careful analysis and test assessment that the new environment was specified and configured to ensure solid site performance and capability upon live. Once configuration was completed we installed the primary Sitefinity application and set up as per site requirements.

Everything was then in place to carry out the migration and begin our agreed schedule of tests to ensure every part of the site migrated successfully and performed as required. Issues were easily identified and corrected and our agreed QA matrix made this a clear and methodical task with an assured end point.

The Result:

This requirement always had two components

1. Robust and timely migration
2. An annual hosting, support & maintenance retainer

Component 1 was completed 10 days ahead of final service cut-off date allowing a comfortable overlap with previous service supplier to capture any post launch issues.

The migration process allowed our client the comfort of a managed and controlled experience with a smooth transition and no adverse impact on their primary fund raising tool.

Component 2 has provided peace of mind knowing that the site and environment are monitored and supported with a clear path to a speedy solution should it be required at the end of a phone line with a team they know and trust.

The migration has also provided our client with the space and planning time to consider the sites medium and long term evolution so that informed and business critical decisions can be made in an informed and effective manner.