The background

South West Communications Group facilitates one of the largest computer system relocation projects ever seen in Europe with the Met Office’s move to its Exeter headquarters.

The Met Office is one of the world's leading providers of environmental and weather-related services. Its solutions and services meet the needs of many communities of interest from the general public, the Government and schools through to broadcasters, online media, civil aviation and almost every other industry sector both in the UK and around the world.

The challenge

The Met Office was moving its powerful and highly sophisticated computer systems from Bracknell to its new Exeter headquarters in Devon. The entire project needed to be carried out in stages as members of staff moved down to Exeter at different times throughout the year to accommodate their physical relocation. This mammoth task began in January 2003 and continued for 12 months.

It involved the preparation of the new comms rooms to accommodate more than 180 separate systems in advance of the move, careful decommissioning of the computer equipment at Bracknell and then re-commissioning this equipment in Exeter.

This IT move was one of the largest computer system relocations in Europe. Each process of the move had to be intricately planned to maintain the operation of the systems so that disruption to its 1,200 users was kept to an absolute minimum.

In addition to this, permanent connections to remote offices had to be relocated to Exeter and connected to the infrastructure to keep these operational.

The solution

South West Communications Group was awarded the contract by the Met Office’s principal IT contractor LogicaCMG both to facilitate the move to Exeter and also to provide ongoing support for the Met Office headquarters IT service’s infrastructure for a further 5 years. The solution included the following:

• Dedicated PRINCE2 project management
• Flexible team of engineers
• Engineering expertise
• Ongoing service support

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