Case Study – National Recruitment Firm

Cloud Solutions Group successfully migrates NRF to Azure and Office365 over a weekend,

Value Delivered

Immediate cost savings- 70% monthly and $1 million dollars over 3 years

Best practice Hybrid solution

Reduced operational complex

Enhanced data resiliency

Scalable, fit for purpose and cost-effective solution

Improved productivity

Improved user experience

Technology Used

Dell R740xd servers

VMware VSAN

Veeam

Zerto Cloud DRaaS

The client

The client is Australia’s leading owner-operated labour hire business network. It operates under a franchisee model, with over 20 franchisees located across Australia. They service industries across; Healthcare, Construction, Transport and many more.

Their current MSP had suffered a catastrophic outage meaning the client had no access to any systems or data and their business had ground to a halt.

The Recruitment Firm was referred to Cloud Solutions Group and contacted us late on a Friday afternoon to see if we could help them. We immediately engaged and over the weekend the team migrated their mail to Office365, Microsoft Teams for collaboration, their File data to Azure Files and delivered this securely utilising Azure Windows Virtual Desktops. This meant they were operational on the Monday.

Once they were operational and the client’s requirements for Security and Disaster Recovery were determined, CSG implemented Azure Backup for Data Protection and Azure Site Recovery for failover to a different Region.

In consultation with the client we determined that Microsoft365 E3 licenses were the best fit for the client, given it includes; Windows Virtual Desktop licensing, all the core Mail and Collaboration tools as well as a comprehensive suite of security services to protect devices and data.

The first stages for security were focussed on protecting Users Identity and MFA with Conditional Access was deployed. In additional to this Data Loss Prevention (DLP) was implemented with Azure Information Protection and Intune for managing both domain and non-domain joined devices and their applications.

This will be an ongoing process of continuous improvement with the client.

CHALLENGES

· Severity One outage critically impacting business operations for 4 days.

· Current MSP unable to help and resolve issues.

· No access to data and applications.

· Insufficient Disaster Recovery and Security solutions in place.

Summary

Critical Systems Failure resulting in 4-day outage

Contacted CSG on Friday, operational by Monday

Team worked day and night over the weekend utilising:

Azure IaaS, Azure AD, Azure Files
Azure Windows Virtual Desktops
- Office365 and Teams for Collaboration

Our Approach

As soon as we understood the client’s predicament, we engaged without a signed contract to get them out of a really tough predicament. The process we followed was:

· Rapidly understood the client’s architecture and environment.

· Collaboratively designed a solution with them.

· Worked over the weekend so they could be operational by Monday.

· Reviewed and optimised the architecture to align to best practices and the clients Security and Business Continuity needs.

The Solution Delivered:

The solution provided many improvements over their existing architecture:

A Cloud solution based on Azure and Office365

Given their situation they needed a rapidly scalable platform that would allow staff to work immediately. Azure was chosen as the best platform given their existing investment in Microsoft technologies.

Microsoft Teams and Outlook Online for Collaboration

These best of breed services were simple and quick to implement and allowed the client the communicate with their staff and clients securely and efficiently.

Azure Files for File services

Azure Files is Microsoft’s managed file service. This is a secure and easy to consume service and facilitated rapid access to their critical file data.

Multi Factor Authentication (MFA), with Conditional Access

To secure authentication and identity, we deployed Azure MFA with Conditional Access providing an additional layer of context-based security on top of MFA.

Azure Information Protection (AIP) for Data Loss Prevention(DLP)

AIP was implemented to allow the client to have granular control over access to their data and the flow of data in and out of their organisation.

Azure Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD)

The client had been using Horizon View Virtual Desktops. WVD is a relatively new service from Microsoft that delivers best of breed secure remote access to applications and data. WVD was implemented quickly allowing users to work remotely from any device and any location.

Microsoft Intune for Endpoint Management

Given the volume of remote sites and users with non-standard mobile devices and laptops, it was agreed that it was advisable to deploy Microsoft Intune to centrally manage and secure corporate data and applications on all of these devices.

Azure Site Recovery and Azure Backup

Both Azure Site Recovery and Azure Backup were implemented to protect critical data as well as replicate data and servers to a separate Azure Region for Disaster Recovery.

Improved end user experience with enhanced collaboration and performance

By migrating away from legacy on premises tools to Microsoft’s modern Workplace 365 services and the Azure cloud platform, the users now have access to the best tools in the market as well as a resilient and scalable platform.

Cost savings

Even with all the new services and features we still saved the client money on their monthly IT costs.

The Cloud Solutions Group USP:

· Our agility and client first philosophy- we engaged straight away and helped the client over a weekend.

· Our ease of doing business- we helped the client without any commercials in place as it was the right thing to do.

· Our Cloud capability- we had the expertise to get the client up and running over a weekend.