Careful planning and plenty of testing were the key to Southern Sun’s no-downtime migration with Velocity Group.

Velocity Group has completed a major IT infrastructure project with Southern Sun without requiring any downtime at all. The job was to migrate Southern Sun’s IT systems back to its own domain after Tsogo Sun Holdings unbundled hotels from its portfolio and was forced to split back into two separate companies.

The migration was completed amid challenging conditions: not only did Velocity Group need to restore the IT functionality Southern Sun had while it was part of Tsogo Sun Holdings, but it had to do it 100% remotely.

Thanks to very careful planning, the use of a pilot site and extensive testing, Velocity Group successfully completed the job in just five months. Key to the project’s success was Velocity Group’s use of remote tools and proprietary scripts that it had developed over many similar projects.

At the end of the project, Velocity Group had successfully migrated Southern Sun back to its own domain and moved the company into its own Exchange Online and M365 tenants, with the changes affecting more than 4 000 endpoints.

All of this was done without any downtime at any of Southern Sun’s 100 locations.

“We just loved the way Velocity Group approached this project,” says Southern Sun’s IT operations and service manager, Lizette Durig. “It was difficult, but they were knowledgeable and committed, they really listened to what we needed, and in the end they tackled it in just the right way.”

‘What I like to see’

“We view these projects as not just jobs to be done,” says Jonathan Kropf, Velocity Group CEO. “We see them as an opportunity to prove ourselves to the client, which can lead to further work down the line. This is exactly what happened with Southern Sun; they were so happy with how this migration project turned out that we’ve since engaged with them on more projects.”

Terry-Anne Graham, head of IT for South Africa and offshore at Southern Sun, adds: “We had two really great teams working on this project – ours and Velocity Group’s – who communicated constantly and clearly and who really worked as a single entity to get this done. Things went so smoothly as a result that for me it seemed like it all just happened. No drama, no problems, just smooth efficiency. That’s what I like to see!”

For more about, contact Velocity Group on 011 018 1700 or visit www.velocitygroup.global.

About Velocity Group
Velocity Group is a Sandton-based supplier of IT services to the local ICT sector. We specialise in delivering hybrid cloud strategies to our customers to help them navigate the hybrid IT world and make the correct technology decisions. We listen closely to our clients’ needs so that we’re able to deliver the best solutions for their exact requirements.