As we approach this special milestone, it is difficult to convey just how much it means to so many, but we wanted to share our 25 year journey with you.
EARLY YEARS
Bowley Data Systems Ltd. was set up in May 1994 and it is 25 years since our early investigations in to Microsoft’s powerful BackOffice Exchange product set. This led to the specification and implementation of an integrated electronic messaging environment, successfully connecting a local NHS ‘Natural Community’ of primary and secondary care organisations in December 1996.
Ground breaking and formative, this cutting edge MS Exchange ‘White Box’ project introduced:
- ‘System to System’ secure data transfer – before it was widely accepted
- ‘Person to Person’ messaging – before Email and SMS were in the public domain
- ‘Person to Information’ across the wire – before the Internet was fully conceived
- ‘Person to remote hosted System’ Cloud computing – before the term was coined
SMALL GIANT
Adopting the trading name BDS Solutions and moving to new premises in May 1997, the company successfully recruited key personnel in the field of networking and communications; focusing on the development of a portfolio of services to specify, build, implement and support Microsoft Exchange and provide consultancy as a Microsoft Solutions Provider (MSP).
Over the next decade we were centrally contracted by:
- NHS Information Authority (NHSIA)/BT Syntegra – to install MS Exchange in 100+ NHS Trusts, as part of the national Chief Exec email initiative to pump prime electronic mail in the NHS
- NHSIA – to populate the NHS Address Book Service (ABS) using our in house developed NHS Trust address book synchronisation solution ABStract
- Health Authorities (HAs) – to design and configure the first NHSnet Hosted GP email service (GPnet) delivered with a fully managed service providing email for 1,000s of GPs
- HAs/NHS Trusts – to deliver GP-ABStract to over 2,000 GP practices
- NHSIA – to further develop ABStract2 and roll it out to 350 NHS Trusts and HAs
- North West Shared Infrastructure Service (NWSIS) – to design, implement and support a multi-organisational Active Directory forest on behalf of 10 NHS Trusts, servicing 100,000 plus NHS staff
- Connecting for Health (CfH) – to develop a migration suite to populate the Cable & Wireless procured proprietary Mirapoint NHSmail platform and become the sole supplier
A Small giant indeed and along the way working closely with Microsoft, we became a Gold Partner in 2003 and gained their respect to such a degree that two of our founder members joined them: Ceri Eames, in a Pre-Sales Manager role that has taken him to WW Sales Director – Azure Cloud Business in Washington today, and Mark Treleaven, as NHS Strategic Business Manager for nine years before moving on to Marketing Director roles across the UK Healthcare industry.
We have retained our Microsoft Gold Partnership year-on-year and attracted a succession of highly regarded technology specialists, many of whom have been with BDS for 15 to 20 years. We also offer a unique technical consultancy career path for graduates and more recently, apprentices to learn their trade on our busy Service Desk.
MORE FOR LESS
With our most experienced technical consultants moving to Solutions Architect roles and passing on their skills to those that have followed, developing leading edge solutions has become second nature. This has further established our USP in helping to provide ‘more for less’, through the systematic processing of otherwise time consuming technical and administration tasks.
This was very evident in those early ABStract and GP-ABStract days, giving rise to the follow on development of Directory Manager, which in turn has benefited from 15 years of continuous refinement and become the leading NHS identity management solution with a ‘Core Service’ that includes:
- ESR integration and web portal account request management
- Active Directory starter, changes and leaver management
- Group membership management
- User home and profile folder management
- Mailbox management for Exchange or NHSmail
In addition, Directory Manager now provides full control over licences allocated to users in Office 365, providing the following benefits:
- Full integration of ESR, Active Directory and Office 365 user data
- Ease of Exchange Online mailbox provisioning and licence allocation
- Full analysis and reporting of Office 365 licencing
- Monitoring of how many Office 365 licences are available and who they are assigned to
- Identification and revocation of unused Office 365 licences
- Inform future licence planning decisions
Never has the term delivering ‘more for less’ been so critical, than through our engagement with NHS Digital in 2018. They asked if we could develop a new NHSmail migration solution to provide a cost effective service for NHS Trusts wishing to migrate on to the recently procured Accenture platform, as the high cost of migrating was prohibitive.
Working with NHS Digital, Accenture and Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Trust (BCH), who chose BDS Solutions to deliver its NHSmail migration, we provided a fully managed service with more capability and at a lesser price. This included identity mapping using Directory Manager provisioning services and data migration using our NHSmail Migration Toolkit.
Offering a proven, affordable solution that systematically reconciled and synchronised mailboxes, we delivered NHSmail onboarding migrations to multiple NHS Trusts through 2019 and in to 2020, prior to the central NHSmail platform migration freeze.
In early 2021, we adapted our NHSmail Migration Toolkit to migrate to the new Exchange Online (Office 365) service, delivering tens of thousands of mailbox migrations over the last year, working through the NHS Digital pipeline of onboarding projects, as one of just two accredited suppliers.
In recent months, the central Office 365 licencing arrangement (N365) has started to change the migration landscape as NHS Trusts decide between the national Office 365 tenant (NHSmail) and their own N365 licenced private Office 365 tenant.
With no central solution available, we have developed NHSmail offboarding managed services that include:
- Directory Manager to automate the reconciliation of NHSmail and private Office 365 tenant mailboxes
- Migration of all or selected NHSmail mailbox content
- Migration of mailbox-level permissions (Full Access, Send As and Send on Behalf) and mailbox folder-level permissions (delegated by users)
- Migration of distribution lists
If required, we can also setup the target Office 365 tenant and migrate on-premises Exchange mailboxes to Exchange Online. For example, organisations which operate a combination of on-premises Exchange and NHSmail must migrate both to Exchange Online within the private Office 365 tenant.
As we approach the 25th anniversary of that early ‘White Box’ prototype, we celebrate another year delivering ground breaking NHS messaging and infrastructure solutions, with our longstanding commitment to add value wherever and whenever we can.
Merry Xmas and the very best 2022 to all.