Who are Answer Digital and what was the brief?

Answer Digital is a Digital Agency and IT Consulting firm, recognised nationally as one of the best performing and fastest growing digital companies in the UK. They work with organisations across all sectors, applying data and digital technology to help them achieve their ambitions. An employeeowned business, Answer has over 75 members of staff, with clients including Morrisons, Center Parcs and NHS Digital.

When Answer Digital approached us, they were looking for IT specialists that could help them to migrate to a completely cloud-based environment. This was a strategically important move for them, as it would allow them to modernise their processes, increase flexibility for their workforce and increase office space by converting the server room to meeting space.

The Project

Whilst moving to a cloud platform has a multitude of benefits, it does bring with it considerable technical challenges. It was vital to find a solution that was secure, scalable and future proof whilst minimising any impact to the business. Moreover, in the current working environment, with staff working remotely, managing access and security of a remote workforce was critical. MTech is a Microsoft Gold Partner, so the logical first step for us was to look at Azure and Microsoft 365, Microsoft’s cloud computing platforms. To investigate whether Microsoft Azure was a viable option, we needed to consider all of Answer’s IT business processes and see whether these would migrate to and run within that environment.

Their requirements included:

Access to Sage
Secure access to company files and documents
Maintain their VPN & Wireless Authentication with 802.1x – utilising their corporate credentials

Through research and prototyping, we were able to find a way to meet the above requirements. However, a key issue for us was finding a solution in which the migration didn’t require a hard reset (wiping) of each device, as this would have a significant impact on productivity. Unfortunately, the official Microsoft recommended method required this hard reset and this wasn’t a feasible option for Answer. As a result, we had to look at alternative solutions that could seamlessly migrate devices without resetting them. After further research and prototyping we were able to form a solution that allowed us to migrate user profiles and devices from onpremise Active Directory (AD) to Azure Active Directory (AAD) - Microsoft’s enterprise cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) solution.

To prove that this third-party solution would work in practice, we carried out a thorough proof-of-concept project. For this, we used a demo Microsoft 365 tenant as a test environment and focused solely on user and device migration. Through the test environment, we were able to demonstrate migrating users and devices to the cloud without loss of data, keeping the end-user’s profile intact without wiping the device. Satisfied with the results of the test, we were confident that we could then start the process of moving key business systems over to the cloud.

The results

Enhanced security - Increased efficiency - Increased flexibility

All staff were successfully migrated over to cloud management over the three-week period, with minimal downtime and no major issues arising, ensuring staff could continue working without disruption throughout the process. Answer Digital are now operating completely without physical servers, and all of the server hardware has been decommissioned, reclaiming valuable office space. In addition, new firewalls and cloud managed WIFI access points were implemented to improve security and network performance.

Since moving to the cloud, Answer Digital have found instant, tangible benefits for the business, including:

Increased scalability – Answer Digital is growing rapidly, so with a serverless environment, they no longer need to worry about additional power or needing extra space and equipment for additional servers.
Management of their environment is more straightforward and can be done remotely and it no longer requires a device to be log into the local network to update policies. Updates and new features can be released much more quickly, improving staff experience.
Enhanced security for remote users – with remote wipe of devices, biometric login, enforced device encryption and enforced corporate policies.

As this was a first of type migration for us, we carried out the whole process manually to ensure that everything was set up and running correctly. Now that we have deployed this successfully, we are planning to automate the process in the future on a large-scale basis.

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