MB Aerospace Newton Abbot
MB Aerospace Newton Abbot (MBAe Newton Abbot) is an international group providing complex, performance-critical aero-engine components to the Aerospace and Defense market. With manufacturing operations in America, Poland, Taiwan and the UK, MB Aerospace has a broad range of technology solutions which can be leveraged to provide high levels of customer services. They have capabilities across a range of fabrications, special processes and machining.
Current Situation.
MBAe Newton Abbot had a ShoreTel 14.1 telephony system which was soon becoming end of sale and end of support. They needed to migrate their legacy phone system from one generation of software to another, for more seamless communications. MBAe Newton Abbot had been working with Blackstar Solutions for some time, prior to the migration.
Review and Evaluation.
Blackstar Solutions were asked to help MBAe Newton Abbot migrate to a more scalable telephony solution. They recommended moving to Mitel MiVoice Connect, a service offered by Mitel (formerly ShoreTel) that is a unique, on-premise business communications solution. It provides users with the ability to seamlessly use voice, contact and collaboration solutions from one single provider, making business operations smoother and more efficient. The MiVoice Connect platform combines a strong management portal with flexible service plans and an intuitive user experience.
Blackstar Solutions took a consultative approach to review MBAe Newton Abbot’s current telephony infrastructure, addressing any issues early on. The thorough ‘discovery and evaluation’ process started with a comprehensive review of their existing system, servers, third party apps and client software, ensuring that everything was configured correctly and fully compliant. They provided MBAe Newton Abbot with a detailed overview of the requirements, highlighting the migration process and paths.
Seamless Implementation.
Discussions began in February 2018 and the upgrade and migration took place in October 2018. The timing had to be convenient for MBAe Newton Abbot and Blackstar Solutions were very accommodating with their time scales.
The migration was completed over two Friday afternoons to minimise impact and to keep costs down.
Blackstar Solutions made sure that any necessary upgrades had been completed before the migration to MiConnect. The system was running on ShoreTel 14.1 and the MiVoice Connect software could only be migrated to MiVoice Connect from ShoreTel’s version 14.2 system. They also upgraded the old server from Windows 2008 R2 to Windows Server 2016, allowing for future scalability. Windows 2008 R2 would soon become obsolete, so a two-step approach was suggested to upgrade then migrate to a new server, which was a good pre-emptive decision.
There was a small amount of information from the old server that didn’t initially get transferred over, due to a historical non-standard configuration. This was not only quickly identified and resolved, but fed back into the technical check list for future work of similar nature, proving that Blackstar’s processes are always evolving to pick up any anomalies and enhance customer satisfaction.
MBAe Newton Abbot also had an Oak Call Logger, a third party application, so as part of standard practice, Blackstar engaged with Oak to ensure that the new Mitel solution would continue to work seamlessly. There were no issues, as MiVoice Connect integrates very well with numerous applications.
Excellent outcome.
Ben Walker, Infrastructure Analyst at MBAe Newton Abbot, commented,
“We are very pleased with how smooth the migration has been. It’s good to be keeping up-to-date with technology and MiVoice Connect is reliable, scalable and easy to use.
We are delighted with the excellent support that Blackstar Solutions have given us. They take a consultative approach and have always been very responsive.”
Steve O’Shea, Implementation and Solutions Engineer at Blackstar Solutions, added,
“MB Aerospace have now been successfully migrated to Mitel’s MiVoice Connect platform which has given them better features and functionality. We now fully support their new system and server, and hope to continue to do so for many years.”
