July 2009

ESP is a specialist provider of bespoke IT support and infrastructure solutions supporting the Air Transport Industry across the UK, Europe and Asia Pacific region.

Cobalt Ground Solutions Ltd was formed on the 1st of April 2009, by the merger of the ground services subsidiaries of Air France and KLM in the UK – formerly Air France Services Ltd (AFSL) and KLM Ground Services Ltd (KGS).

ESP was given the brief to consolidate the AFSL and KGS IT infrastructures with upgraded application and backup servers. Specifically a solution was required that would connect all offices with capability to expand as required, merge existing e-mail and data from both companies, enable remote working from all locations and provide a state of the art backup solution. All of this had to be carried out with as little impact to the company’s day to day operation as possible.

A solution needed to be designed to connect all existing KLM Ground Services and Air France Services Ltd sites, whilst allowing growth for the future. ESP worked closely with a carefully chosen ISP and helped in the design and implementation of a MPLS network. This provided Cobalt with a secure, reliable and scalable network allowing future new offices to be easily added to the network.

AFSL and KGS existing email solutions needed to be consolidated and hosted in one centrally managed location. ESP designed a Microsoft Exchange solution to provide both a high level of availability and redundancy. Two Microsoft Windows 2003 servers loaded with Microsoft Exchange 2007 were installed. The first acting as a backend ‘Mailbox and Hub Transport Server’ processing all incoming and outgoing email. The second configured as a “Client Access Server’ which is responsible for all client requests for email on the network or away from the office.

The data from both companies needed to be moved and hosted on a replacement server at an onsite data centre. ESP provided a new Microsoft Windows 2003 server with over 2 Terabytes RAID 5 configured raid array to provide Cobalt with ample storage space for the future. All data was moved to the new file server and shared for user access as required.

To enable remote working ESP implemented a terminal server/thin client solution using the latest Windows Server 2008 Operating System and customized HP thin clients. Thin Clients run embedded operating systems and have no mechanical parts so maintenance and running costs are much lower.
A user can log onto a thin client located anywhere on the Cobalt network via the MPLS network and access their data and e-mail which are held centrally.

As a backup solution ESP implemented the latest Symantec BackupExec solution. This backs up all mail stores, databases and company and user data to tape every night which is then stored off site. A second instance of the backup runs continuously using the Symantec BackupExec Continuous Protection (CPS) feature. The continuous protection backup runs 24 hours a day and creates a copy of any file changed and stores it on a second file server. This server is located at a secure location at Terminal 4 and linked to the data centre via Fibre. CPS allow system administrators to recover lost user data in near real-time.

Harminder Kullar of Cobalt commented: ' The merger of KLM Ground Services and Air France Services Ltd into Cobalt Ground Solutions needed the help of an IT partner to design, implement and support the new IT solution. ESP's technical knowhow coupled with their specialised knowledge of the aviation and airport industry made them the ideal choice and this led to a very successful migration with little impact on our day to day operations'.