NHSmail migration delayed by a week

NHSmail’s migration to the Microsoft Exchange platform has been delayed by a week. The first live user accounts were due to move off the Mirapoint platform this weekend, but migration will now start on the weekend of 16 January.

Will Moss, programme head of NHSmail, told E-Health Insider that the decision to defer the start of the migration had been taken because of problems thrown up by a “soak test” of the new service.

He said loading it to 7.5 times the number of people who use the present system had slowed it for web users. Although the service recovered after about ten minutes, he said he was “not happy” that it was ready to offer an acceptable experience for users.

Staff from NHS Connecting for Health, Cable and Wireless, which provides the NHSmail service, and Microsoft carried out some configuration changes to Client Access Services and ran a further soak test.

Moss said the programme board then decided “we were good to go” on the migration. But it was not possible to make the changes and run the further test before 9 January, when the first tranche of 30,000 live user accounts were due to be moved.

Moss said these accounts will be migrated this weekend or in subsequent weekends. He is still hoping the migration will be complete by the end of March.

Moss also told EHI that the “extended user acceptance testing” undertaken by 594 volunteers during December had shown the new service to be popular.

“Everybody said the new platform was better and faster, although I suppose that critics would say that for the work we have done and the money we have spent it should be,” he said.

“However, testers also said they preferred the new service. They liked drag and drop for files and that [the web version] was more like Outlook. They also liked the calendar, which one tester said was ‘a joy to use’ in comparison with the old one.”

The announcement that NHSmail would move to Microsoft Exchange 2007 was made in July last year. Migration was initially due to start in the autumn, but was delayed in September.

Around 300,000 live accounts are due to be migrated, with CfH claiming that registrations for the new system have picked up in recent months, partly as a result of the better service that is being promised.