Leader in Government Relations
Location:
Ukraine
Industry:
Education
Employees:
100+
About the Customer:
Our customer is one of the largest non-government organizations that connects international and domestic businesses and functions as a training center. As a government relations advisor for businesses, they also support their members in their daily business activities providing them with up-to-date information and relevant regulatory environment changes.
Business Challenge
Our customer first addressed Infopulse in 2015 with the request to conduct an audit of their entire IT infrastructure, exposing its weaknesses and key areas for improvement. Our team had to analyze the infrastructure components (workstations, software licenses, server and network infrastructure, business applications and processes), and provide a detailed report with recommendations.
Among the challenges, there were lack of IT infrastructure documentation and specific organization structure, which included several departments with their particular requirements to each business service. That is why our team had to build efficient communication with every department and analyze volumes of collected data. Upon conducting an audit, Infopulse experts discovered the following key areas for improvement within the customer’s IT infrastructure:
- Replace diverse and old software versions (Microsoft Office 2003-2010), no longer supported by Microsoft with an up-to-date solutions to ensure system manageability in place.
- Reconsider server infrastructure to avoid system fragmentation, software compatibility issues; enable better infrastructure monitoring and backup processes.
- Enhance network infrastructure security and network fault tolerance.
- Update legacy versions of a CRM system and the website to enable simpler support.
- Provide a reliable communication channel by migrating away from the existing email system to a solution that meets the business needs of the client.
- Maintain more efficient business processes and application management halted by on-premises business applications that lacked flexibility and required additional effort to support them.
- Optimize license coverage of the current IT infrastructure.
- Upgrade manual document and task management workflows.
- The customer also needed to facilitate and automate their IT infrastructure support.
The next step was to formulate the strategy for IT infrastructure enhancement based on our technical recommendations and results of cost-benefit assessment.
Solution
Complex IT Infrastructure Audit
The performed IT audit resulted in a comprehensive IT infrastructure documentation package, covering the following areas:
- Service Catalogue with the systems criticality estimation and their effectiveness for all departments.
- Detailed description and criticality evaluation of the required changes for each business service and department.
- Costs estimation of enabling the required changes and implementing new business services (Office 365, ITSM system, and remote work capabilities).
- Analysis of the customer’s existing IT systems, their inconsistencies, flaws, related risks, and criticality of changes. Providing recommendations on their upgrade or replacement.
- Analysis of existing software licenses, their incoherence and ways to address them.
- Documenting all the servers and network hardware, their configurations and recommendations on further enhancements and changes.
We provided the customer with a comprehensive report of IT audit results, which highlighted the needed measures for infrastructure modernization. Later it initiated migration to Office 365, consistent upgrade of critical business applications, ITSM system utilization, and introduction of remote work capabilities.
Migration to Office 365
- Migration of main business services to Office 365, their configuration and activation.
- Introduction of a new cloud-based email client Outlook. We also implemented a secure communication channel Skype for Business.
- Setting up SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business and enabling authorization via Active Directory.
- Instructing and training end-users accustoming to Office 365 capabilities.
- Gathering recommendations for the company’s administrators to effectively manage cloud services.
- Infopulse suggested a cost-efficient approach to purchasing new software licenses based on the Microsoft license program for educational organizations.
IT Infrastructure and End-user L1 Support
- Since March 2020, Infopulse has been providing L2 and L3 infrastructure support including network services, virtual machines, infrastructure applications, as well as end-user L1 support.
- Enabled infrastructure improvements: introduced incident, change and access management within a new ITSM system, implemented backup and recovery, etc.
- Provides consultancy on the development of IT infrastructure strategy and new services.
Remote Work Transition and Security
As our client planned office relocation, Infopulse provided extensive consultation on organizing their IT infrastructure, paying utmost attention to enabling reliable and secure operations. Currently our team is engaged in mitigating risks from remote work transition, helping the customer to reduce costs on the facilities maintenance while preserving the same level of organization productivity. In the future, our customer plans to refuse from on-premises infrastructure, moving all workloads to the cloud so as not to depend on a specific location.
Switching to remote work and distant collaboration, our customer had to ensure their business continuity and high level of data security within and outside the association. Therefore, Infopulse is also involved in strengthening their IT infrastructure security, as well as enabling effective content management and safe data sharing in remote work mode between the employees and different business departments. Leveraging Microsoft technologies, we are also developing effective algorithms to prevent data leakage and ensure data integrity.
Technologies
Business Value
- The performed IT infrastructure audit allowed for creating an effective IT infrastructure modernization strategy and initiated a stepwise digital transformation.
- With the software upgrade and new functionality adoption, the customer’s systems and business applications have become more flexible, resilient and secure for the end-users.
- Due to the migration to Office 365 and further cloud services implementation, the customer automated documentation workflow, provided its members with modern collaboration and communication tools.
- We advised the customer to select the Microsoft educational program, which optimized license costs by 5X.
- The adopted ITSM system provided our customer with prompt IT support services, advanced report generation tools, and was configured to follow SLAs.
- Remote work capabilities are helping to ensure the company’s business continuity during the COVID-19 outbreak.
- Improved IT infrastructure support leads to optimizing cost, enhanced monitoring, and increased security.
Thanks to our dedication to this project and good results, the customer is eager to delegate Infopulse, as one of their reliable IT partners, perspective projects contributing to their further digital transformation!
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