Magazine Services Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of BBC Worldwide and provides back office operations for BBC Magazines and Origin Publishing Ltd.  

These include accounting,marketing and human resources operations as well as computer maintenance and mail systems. The company recognised that its legacy mail system was struggling with both data volumes and the increasing number of users. Jolyon Day, IT & Systems Manager with Magazine Services comments that the mail system, “was also fairly basic and lacked a great deal of functionality that we would have liked, such as group diaries etc. We knew eventually that the system would need a major overhaul and set up a team to look at the possibilities open to us.”

The team recognised that a move to Exchange 2007 would be the best option but realised that they did not have the right skills in-house to enable this. With a predominantly MAC-based estate, Magazine Services needed specialist
skills to make Exchange work with Entourage for MAC and investigated the market for a systems expert with the right sort of expertise to help. During the selection process an interview with key professionals from Applicable reassured Jolyon Day that here was a company with the right skills – in fact they were currently rolling out a similar project – and the right approach. Jolyon explains, “We were looking for a company that would share knowledge with us.

“The mail system, was also fairly basic and lacked a great deal of functionality that we would have liked, such as group diaries etc. We knew eventually that the system would need a major overhaul and set up a team to look at the possibilities open to us.”

JOLYON DAY IT & Systems Manager
Magazine Services Ltd. 

The people we support are heavily MAC based and as a result we look after a number of non-standard applications that have to play together.” It was also important for Magazine Services that the company they chose to work with could be flexible and sympathetic to the nature of the company’s operations. Publication deadlines for the large range of lifestyle and interest magazines output by the BBC and Origin Publishing are mission critical. Magazine Services simply could not switch email systems for its 300 plus users overnight.

“Our business depends 100% on email,” Jolyon continues. “Writers use the Internet research and information gathering, contributors submit articles via email etc. Without email we don’t have a business – which is why it is imperative that any technology partner understands the nature of our business. Also, we needed to implement a step-by-step installation rather than a drop-in.”

A new project team comprising individuals from Magazine Services and Applicable worked together as a single team to ensure the successful implementation and rolling migration of the new email system, alongside a disaster recovery plan and adherence to European laws on data archiving. The biggest challenge for the team lay in making Exchange work with Entourage on the MAC platform. Exchange 2007 with Active Directory was installed, designed to avoid a complex clustered configuration. A number of issues relating to the MACs’ DNS entries had to be addressed and the team had to research these technical challenges and work through them. This could only be achieved, according to Jolyon Day, with a well integrated team working towards a single goal, something that Applicable’s technical professionals are adept at delivering.

Applicable provided a primary point of contact for the Magazine Services project; this person delivered an overview and recommendations based on the extensive knowledge and expertise within the wider Applicable team.

The project team of Magazine Services and Applicable personnel, would discuss this and establish key milestones with roles and responsibilities. As a result Magazine Services IT and Systems personnel retained control and involvement
at every stage of the migration, ensuring that no business processes were disrupted and the experience for its users was a positive one. The introduction of a more functional, robust email system has met with the approval of Magazine Services’ customers,“It has been very well received,” explains Jolyon Day. “People have welcomed the new system, especially as the old one was creaking at the seams. They are able to integrate with mobile communications and push email, as well as benefiting from integrated diaries and more collaborative working.” Foreseeing the success of the new system, Magazine Services and Applicable have already planned for the future. The system has scalability built in, being designed to double in size in the next three years.

As Jolyon Day concludes:

“This was a major systems overhaul of a vital component of our operation. Applicable’s knowledge and flexible approach has helped us deliver a scalable and resilient system to our users that we can support as part of our ongoing operations.”

JOLYON DAY IT & Systems Manager
Magazine Services Ltd.