CASE STUDY
When ALTANA acquired the rheology business of Rockwood Holdings, Inc, intending to consolidate it with BYK, a number of integration projects were triggered between the two businesses to ensure that all IT systems could be unified.
BYK Additives & Instruments is one of the world’s leading suppliers of additives and measuring instruments. They work heavily with the coatings, inks and plastics industries, where inclusion of their additives improves product characteristics and production processes.
Today, the company employs over 2,500 people worldwide and forms part of the ALTANA Group.
As part of the group, plans were made to integrate Rockwood Holdings’ rheology business into BYK – triggering a series of IT projects to unify systems.
Industry:
Manufacturing
Organisation size:
150 people
Solutions:
Cloud solutions, data centre & networking
Of all the IT migration projects required, one was especially critical – merging Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) domains between BYK and Rockwood.
In turn, this would enable the servers hosting all applications and user data to be migrated—an important step in completing the acquisition process. As a vital one-time event that most IT teams would not normally face, BYK recognised the need for expert assistance to ensure a successful transition.
The migration presented several complex challenges, including identifying servers to migrate, scoping host servers, establishing appropriate user group access, and the planning and orchestration of a phased migration – all to be performed whilst maintaining business continuity.
BYK invited Advania to join their UK IT team to understand first-hand the project objectives and technical considerations. From the initial meeting, Advania experts helped to guide the process, and outline a roadmap for what actions would need to be undertaken.
Given the complexity and potential knock-on effects affecting server infrastructure, networks and security, an Advania engineer would be on-site throughout the entire transition period, able to support as needed to ensure project success.
To minimise risk, both domains were kept online side-by-side until the old domain was ready to be decommissioned. This ensured stability and full business continuity throughout the process.
Advania delivered comprehensive support throughout including:
The project was delivered in under six months, with support from the Advania on-site engineer throughout the process. Critical work was scheduled to take place out of hours and at weekends, minimising any potential disruption to business operations.
The domain migration delivered exceptional results:
The systems in production on the new domain came across almost hitch-free, with any remedial actions resulting in improved configurations. The level of system architecture knowledge Advania established throughout the project was crucial to its success.
Dan Newton
Information Services Manager, BYK
Following the successful domain migration, BYK’s UK operation is now fully integrated into the ALTANA Group infrastructure, positioned to effectively support its users with enhanced security compliance and refreshed systems.
The comprehensive nature of the migration project has left BYK with a robust, future-ready IT infrastructure that supports their continued growth as part of the ALTANA Group’s global operations.
Six-month migration project with on-site support throughout.
Users successfully migrated between Entra ID domain.
Complete PC estate re-imaging using virtual machine distribution.
Side-by-side domain operation until safe decommissioning.
Contact us to discover how we can put the Advania Advantage to work for your requirements.
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