Successful Business Migration to Microsoft 365

Introduction

A global manufacturing company was being carved out from their parent company. They had to set up a new IT infrastructure from the ground up. It had to be in place before transitional service agreements ended with the former parent company. Avenga was selected to architect, configure, and implement this business-critical transformation and guarantee minimal disruption to daily operations across a global team.

Challenge

Challenge Avenga was tasked with the architecture and configuration of an infrastructure for identity and access management and with the migration of around 1,500 users from 36 different countries from HCL Notes to Microsoft 365.

For the architecture of this new collaboration infrastructure, the client expected guidance from Avenga on industry best practices. They wanted to avoid the complexity and high management overheads of the old environment.

Solution

Process

Requirements Architecture

We engaged with stakeholders to define the target Microsoft 365 environment, design the identity and access management architecture, and plan the migration strategy, including the wave-based approach.

Detailed planning for tenant configuration, data migration, and adoption and change management was also undertaken in this phase.

Implementation and Configuration

This stage involved the hands-on building and configuration of the new Microsoft 365 tenant and the implementation of the designed architecture. This included setting up Active Directory and Entra ID, configuring Microsoft 365 services, and preparing the migration environment.

We conducted pilot migrations to test the processes and gather feedback for adjustments. The development of training materials and the setup of the central SharePoint communication site for users also occurred during this phase.

Migration and Support

This final stage involved the execution of the planned migration waves, where we moved users and their data from HCL Notes (and tenant-to-tenant for existing M365 users) to the new Microsoft 365 environment.

Crucially, this stage included the provision of Hypercare support, tailored to the time zones of the globally distributed users, to handle any issues and support a smooth transition.

Results

• Future-proof identity and access management architecture befitting a global manufacturing company with 1.500 employees in 36 countries
• Modern collaboration infrastructure with Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Teams
• All employees migrated to Microsoft 365 within the timeframe originally planned at the project start
• Organizational target content structure ready in SharePoint based on requirements of business departments

Migrate to Microsoft 365 with Avenga

Let’s talk

• Business disruptions were minimized during the migration, with a lower amount of Hypercare support cases than initially expected
• Positive user feedback for the migration process, quality of Hypercare support, documentation, and change communications
• Successful transition from the migration project to standard technical operations and support services at the new company