Case Study | Cloud Migration with Microsoft Azure & O365
Acquisition Migration into Azure Cloud & Office 365 Deployment
Published: 31 October 2021
Business Challenge
Equity Group Holdings Limited (EGHL) is a large financial services conglomerate. EGHL acquired a controlling stake in two banks, including the Banque Commerciale du Congo (BCDC), the second-largest commercial bank in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
EGHL approached Tangent Solutions to undertake the migration of their recent acquisitions’ on-premises workloads and data to Microsoft’s Azure cloud.
The priority initiative, and focus of this case study, was to quickly and securely migrate these new institutions into Equity Group’s Active Directory and Office 365 deployment. Thus, ensure a speedy and effective consolidation of the two assets and support effective communications both within and between divisions.
The challenge varied according to the original institution’s Active Directory and Messaging platforms consisting of:
- An on-premises Exchange server 2016
- An on-premises Novell GroupWise 2014
The project required both excellent data integrity and a fast turnaround. EGHL desired an approach that would minimise the impact of disruptions caused by the migration.
The Solution
Tangent Solutions coordinated with Equity Bank’s technical team to fully understand their requirements, and applied their in-house cloud acceleration technology to provide an effective on-premises migration to cloud IAM (Identity and Access Management) and O365.
The transition was handled over a weekend to ensure minimal impact on staff. Identities from the newly-acquired institutions were copied to EBC’s Active Directory Forest. This data was then synced up to Azure’s Active Directory.
AvePoint Elements Fly was implemented to migrate existing mailbox data into a cloud-based MS Exchange and ensure full compliance with O365 licensing.
Business Outcomes
EGHL quickly consolidated the essential communications components of their new acquisitions. EGHL retained and extended its Active directory forest via a single DNS namespace, enabling efficient internal collaboration, allowing staff to easily:
- Locate each other in an organisation-wide address book
- Initiate email conversations
- Send instant messages
- Share, and collaborate on documents
- Participate in online meetings
- Utilize all Office 365 applications
All these activities are performed under robust security with full compliance to industry regulations and standards.
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