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Spark brings email home to New Zealand

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SMX News Spark

Spark media release — Thursday, 11 May 2017.

Spark has now completed the process of moving its Xtra email service away from Yahoo to New Zealand-owned email platform provider SMX. Spark and SMX now have over 800,000 Xtra email accounts up and running on the new email platform.

Jason Paris, CEO of Spark Home Mobile and Business, says, “We’re really happy to be celebrating this milestone: we’re officially off the Yahoo platform and Xtra Mail is now hosted at home here in New Zealand."

“From an overall perspective, the migration project went well. We’ve moved more than 800,000 email accounts containing 1.4 billion messages, safely and securely, in the timeline we originally committed to. This has been one of the biggest IT migration projects in New Zealand’s history."

“While we know a small percentage of customers experienced issues both on the Yahoo side and due to migration activities, the large majority of customers had a seamless experience as we migrated their email to the new platform. 9 out of 10 customers* had a smooth transition.”

It’s been a busy six months since Spark announced the move away from Yahoo. Spark has gone through three phases of work to move accounts across. From September to November, the focus was on gaining permission from customers to bring their data across. In December and January, the project team set everything up ready for the migration. Then from February to April, SMX ran the actual migration process, which ended with customers having their email set up in the new, New Zealand based mail system.

Paris explains, “The migration did have some challenges, particularly when dealing with Yahoo. It’s great to complete the transition away from an email provider who’s been dealing with big issues on a global basis, and has kept us very much at arm’s length, to an email partner here in New Zealand that operates with real transparency. Thanks to our partnership with SMX, we have brought email home – and our customers are benefiting. They now have a faster, more secure and more reliable email platform, based in New Zealand.”

ENDS

Notes to editor:

  • *Only 12% of Xtra customers contacted Spark during the migration with a query about email – and nearly all these customers had their question or issue resolved during or following the first contact they had with Spark. Only 0.1% of customers had an issue that took multiple attempts to fix.
  • All Xtra customers have received an email confirming that the migration is complete. They will continue to access their email at www.xtramail.co.nz, unless they have bookmarked an alternative Yahoo address, in which case they will need to start using the Xtra Mail URL. If they use an up to date email client such as Outlook, or an app on their phone, they won’t see any visible changes. However, if they use webmail, they’ll see a whole new webmail website with a much cleaner interface.
  • If Xtra customers have any outstanding questions around their email, they can find more information here: https://www.spark.co.nz/email. And if they need any advice or support, they can contact Spark by calling 0800 934 348 to get through to the Xtra email team.
  • The SMX Managing Messaging solution for Spark is built on the SMX3 cloud integration platform and includes the SMX email security suite, alongside a host of email security and third party email messaging applications. The Open-Xchange App Suite is a key component of the solution – and is a globally recognised product used by major companies globally including Virgin Media, Comcast and Orange.
“We’re really happy to be celebrating this milestone: we’re officially off the Yahoo platform and Xtra Mail is now hosted at home here in New Zealand."