# DHL Systems Inc.

Microsoft® Project enabled a team of systems administrators with limited time and resources to plan a company-wide transition to a new computer platform. They developed a thoroughly documented solution plan with zero downtime.

Vital Statistics:
DHL Systems Inc.
Burlingame, CA

Industry:
Information Technology Support for the DHL Worldwide Express Organization

Employees: 130

Software Programs:
Microsoft Project
Microsoft Schedule+
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft PowerPoint®
Microsoft Access
Microsoft FoxPro®

Hardware:
Sun and Hewlett-Packard file servers
Pentium PCs

Results of Using Project:
"Microsoft Project enabled us to structure a company-wide transition to a Microsoft Windows® 95 platform within a very limited time frame."

DHL Systems Inc. provides technology services and systems support for DHL Worldwide Express, which operates in more than 200 countries. This systems unit of the international air express services organization is based in Burlingame, CA.

The variety of computer platforms at DHL Systems created additional work for systems administrators. Hardware included a variety of UNIX-based workstations operating TCP/IP and Novell networks. Many of the organization’s 130 employees also used PCs that ran the Microsoft Windows 3.1 operating system and a number of applications.

A decision was made by an executive management committee to move the PCs to the Microsoft Windows 95 operating system and to upgrade the applications.

Responsibility for developing a comprehensive solution for this transition was handed to Jim Miglino, Patrick Morrissey, and two other systems administrators. The executive committee wanted a complete plan from the administrators in just 30 days.

This presented the team with a tough challenge. They had to develop a complete solution outlining every procedure needed to implement the new computer system in six months. In addition to planning all details of the migration to the Microsoft Windows 95 platform, their regular duties still had to be fulfilled.

After examining several other project management programs, Patrick and his colleagues selected Microsoft Project as their planning tool because it was the easiest to learn and allowed them to fulfill all requirements within the time, cost, and resource constraints.

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