RSA had an IBM mainframe system and about 130 servers installed in their Toronto home office. The outsourcing contract specified that the vendor would construct a duplicate infrastructure configuration in Montreal which would be available for full shake-down tests before commitment to transfer production would be given.

Once the agreement had been signed, most of the RSA IT staff were dispersed and there was no one in the organization to define the test criteria and process for the migration of the mid-range (server) processors.

Requirement

A plan for the testing and certification of the suite of servers in conjunction with testing pans for the mainframe.

Project Summary

Having signed an agreement to migrate mainframe and server processing to an outsourcer (CGI) in Montreal, RSA required a testing methodology and processes for ensuring that mission-critical systems were fully functional after migration, before cutover.

The project was suffering delays due to the shortage of experienced IT staff to prepare the new servers and build a test plan.

Approach

• Define the server and application configurations and deployment schedule
• Identify user representatives for each application that would define test requirements and approval criteria.
• Define a test definition framework, evaluation, tracking and reporting process for server migrations.
• Organized user resources to define test plans for each server/application combination.

• The applications were successfully migrated to the Montreal site.