CHALLENGES

Brays, a Yorkshire-based accounting firm, approached Pavilion as they were looking to migrate their third party applications into the cloud. 

The number of applications the firm were running, the cost of doing so, and the need to adapt to more flexible working arrangements was the primary driver in the project. The need to refresh infrastructure to support the applications was also causing a CAPEX concern, in addition to OPEX concerns with power and cooling for the appliances. 

As the project took shape, the possibility of a full migration to move content from the firm’s physical servers to the cloud became the customer’s preferred solution. 

As a further part of the project, Brays were also looking to move away from their current anti-virus provider in order to reinforce their security.

SOLUTION

Having understood Brays’ challenges and objective, the Pavilion team proposed the solution of migrating the firm’s data onto SharePoint in order to decommission this role from the on-prem servers. As Brays were already Office 365 users and had access to SharePoint and OneDrive through their existing licenses, this was an easy decision to make. 

A further requirement was that Domain Services needed to be built in as a this was key aspect of the existing on-premise infrastructure. Under this configuration, the authentication of endpoints is covered by Azure Active Directory (AAD). 

Microsoft InTune services were also deployed in order to assist Brays with managing remote devices more efficiently. 

RESULTS

The migration to SharePoint has provided additional flexibility for Brays’ users to access documents, and for collaboration between one another. This is even more important now that remote working is becoming more of a standard practice for the company’s employees.  

With the use of Microsoft InTune and the PAVAssure team’s help, Brays now have the ability to deploy software remotely, improve security on each device, and remote wipe devices in the event of a breach or configuration of devices for new starters. 

In addition to this, InTune’s AutoPilot feature has enabled Brays’ IT team to ship laptops and PCs directly to remote users. The user can then plug in the device, open their user profile, and everything is pre-configured for them to begin work immediately and without the need for an engineer. AutoPilot has enabled Brays to save significant costs on engineer time to configure devices and user profiles, while also enhancing user productivity with ‘plug and play’ devices. 

Brays’ access to InTune has also been seamlessly facilitated by the Pavilion team. This required Brays to upgrade their existing Microsoft 365 licenses to Microsoft Business Premium. The cost model is OPEX-friendly, with multiple user licenses all paid for on a monthly basis. As the licenses are provided through Pavilion, it is seamless for Brays to increase or decrease their license numbers as required. 

Brays’ anti-virus upgrade requirements were also satisfied by migrating to Sophos. By rolling this project into the broader cloud migration, valuable engineer time was saved and the Sophos licenses were all deployed to users’ devices through InTune.