Comapny Name: AvePoint and Airbus Helicopters

Challenge: With its main facilities dispersed throughout France, Germany, and Spain, Airbus Helicopters implemented Microsoft SharePoint in order to help all of its departments collaborate and manage documents through one centralized, business-critical system. The company has approximately 10,000 end-users accessing SharePoint. “SharePoint has begun to replace previously used systems, such as EMC Documentum eRoom and file shares,” said Lothar Hanke, Head of Collaboration and Document Management at Airbus Helicopters. “The platform continues to become more and more important to the business.” Before the platform was rolled out to the company, Airbus Helicopters administrators required a storage solution in order to efficiently manage its Microsoft SQL Server content database for optimal performance. Since SharePoint did not have a native solution to store binary large objects (BLOBs) – which SQL Server is not designed to store – externally according to Airbus Helicopters’s specific business rules, the administrators began to search for a third-party solution.

Benefits and Outcomes: Externalized 59% of SharePoint data outside of Microsoft SQL Server content database according to business rules to improve performance and reduce storage costs. Migrated 40 GB of data, including collaborative workspaces and document libraries, from legacy deployment of EMC Documentum eRoom to SharePoint in order to centralize content for employees. Moved SharePoint sites within SharePoint environment for end-users through a centralized management console.

As use of SharePoint continues to grow throughout Airbus Helicopters, administrators will turn to additional DocAve products within the fully integrated platform to solve management and governance challenges they face. The company is implementing DocAve File Share Navigator, which helps administrators consolidate file server access into SharePoint and provides local or remote end-user access without degrading SharePoint performance, allowing end-users to be able to view and access legacy file share content through SharePoint without requiring migration. “As SharePoint becomes our company’s main collaboration platform, DocAve is integral in enabling our end-users to access the information they need through the platform,” Ramond said.