MediaNews Group - E1 Upgrade/E-Business Migration

About the Client

Based in Denver, Colorado, MediaNews Group was founded in 1983 and pioneered the concept of clustering, which centralized a variety of functions including production, ad sales, business operations and other areas for a developing groups of newspapers. In 2013, MediaNews Group and 21st Century Media merged to become Digital First Media, but officially the company still goes by the business name of MediaNews Group.

Challenges the Client Faced

With software support set to expire, MediaNews Group made the decision to upgrade to the latest release of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. As part of their upgrade plan, they also wanted to move to a new Tools Release and replace their existing hardware and related infrastructure. Before moving forward, MediaNews Group needed to identify a highly skilled and experienced partner that could assist them with their aggressive plans. It was also imperative that the selected partner provide an effective knowledge transfer to MediaNews Group staff.

GSI's Solution

After evaluating several vendors, MediaNews Group selected GSI as their preferred partner because of their extensive experience with JD Edwards and their willingness to think out-of-the-box, which allowed for an effective knowledge transfer of information from GSI to the MediaNews Group staff. In the preliminary discussions, most of the vendors were not open to providing this type of service. “GSI’s innovative approach allowed for a complete knowledge transfer to our staff, which was an invaluable part of the upgrade process”, stated Dawn Hoople, Director—Corporate Systems. GSI was also instrumental in providing a best practices approach for addressing the company’s hardware configuration. This would include the installation and configuration of four (4) IBM WebSphere servers on virtual machines for production load balancing, as well as other enhancements. After the 21st Century Media merger, GSI also migrated their Oracle E-Business system to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. “We were most impressed with the results achieved by GSI, handling the migration from E-Business Suite to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, as the project was delivered on schedule and on budget”, Dawn went on to say.