Clean migration to collaboration with Microsoft 365

Focus, costs and redundancy as the main drivers for outsourcing

If you want to remain a global leader as a supplier to the textile industry after more than 130 years, you have to deliver high quality at competitive prices. This also applies to IT.

Initial situation


The Swiss SME SANITIZED AG is the world's leading company for hygiene function and material protection for textiles and plastics. SANITIZED AG has been doing pioneering work since 1935, developing innovative, effective and safe technologies for antimicrobial finishing. Around 50 employees work at the headquarters in Burgdorf, plus representatives in the sister companies in the USA, China and India.

Standard tools such as mail and Office applications simply have to work in such a highly specialized company without tying up a lot of attention and money for licenses. This is why companies have often not always bought every new version of the Microsoft Office Suite and Exchange Server, as long as the 'old' generation of software still met their requirements without complaint. SANITIZED AG, for example, used Microsoft Office 2010 until 2019. Now, however, this old software had to be replaced, not least for security reasons.

The challenge: uninterrupted and efficient migration


The leap from locally operated Exchange Server and Office 2010 to the current Office 365 Suite is a big one, but it also offers many opportunities.

• Historical "uncontrolled growth" of users and mailboxes must be cleaned up, as this can save license costs
• The Exchange Server should now be hosted in the Microsoft Cloud and employees should be able to use modern collaboration tools without the risk of business-critical data being stored decentrally in the cloud and new Office 365 tools being used in an uncoordinated manner
• In addition, the transition from the old system to the new one must be well prepared so that the important interfaces to the peripheral systems such as CRM, ERP, etc. continue to function smoothly.
• During the actual changeover, users on their clients should only be affected by the shortest possible work interruption

All in all, despite the standard software, it was a challenging software migration project that Erich Jau, the IT manager at SANITIZED AG, did not want to tackle alone alongside all his other tasks.

The solution


The goal was clear: the Exchange server should now be operated in the Microsoft cloud environment and the workstations should be equipped with Office 365 Pro Plus and its modern collaboration tools such as "Teams". But how do you manage this transition without interrupting work and without relinquishing central control over IT? Erich Jau called in his long-standing IT partner ITpoint Systems AG. The Bern-based ITpoint team has been supporting SANITIZED AG in the IT sector for many years and knows the IT environment and all its interfaces to the peripheral systems inside out.

Step 1: The preparation


For this Exchange/Office 365 migration, an Office 365 specialist from ITpoint's headquarters in Rotkreuz joined the Bern-based project team. The first task was to analyze the current situation, create a migration concept and configure tools for an error-free, automated migration. Erich Jau and ITpoint jointly examined the current situation and meticulously defined the objectives, details and procedure for the transition:

• Which user mailboxes are still needed? Which impersonal "collective mailboxes" can be eliminated in terms of licensing and continued as free mailboxes?
• Add-ins in ERP/CRM systems and other peripheral systems such as printers and scan-to-mail
• Office templates to be migrated for letters, minutes, presentations, etc.
• Where is the business data stored and how do the decentralized employees access it?
• Which tools from the broad Office 365 offering should be activated for all employees from the outset? With which guidelines for use?

Step 2: The Exchange migration


With this clear plan in hand, we got to work. As a first step, ITpoint moved Microsoft Exchange from the local server at SANITIZED AG to the Microsoft Cloud, as well as all data older than 30 days. Without disrupting operations, of course! ITpoint used BitTitan's professional MigrationWiz for this.
Then came the big cut: cutover on a Friday evening, "mandatory Outlook evening" for all employees. ITpoint's system engineer synchronized the remaining recent data from Exchange on premise to Exchange Online and flipped the switch. From now on, all emails ran via Exchange Online. So far, so good. To customize the mailbox connection on the local workstations, ITpoint had prepared an Exchange configuration file for BitTitan Deployment Pro. When starting Outlook for the first time, users simply had to enter their email address and their existing password - and that was that.

Step 3: Upgrade to Office 365, introduction of Microsoft Teams


The first selected test users of SANITIZED AG have now received the upgrade to Office 365 Pro Plus. Their feedback provided information on which adjustments needed to be made to critical points such as interfaces in the peripheral systems, file storage and printer connections, etc. ITpoint used this information to create the upgrade configuration file for Office 365. ITpoint used this information to create the upgrade configuration file for Office 365, which reduced the time Erich Jau had to invest in the installation per client to just around 15 minutes. He completed the upgrade of the clients himself over a weekend. "For most of the clients, it was really highly automated. Of course, there were one or two clients with a 'messed up' initial situation where I had to clean up manually first. But I was happy to take this opportunity to clean up," comments Erich Jau dryly. The international employees received the upgrade at a long-planned sales meeting at the Burgdorf headquarters.

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Decision in favor of cloud-based infrastructure as a service

The advantages


Collaboration with international employees in particular has become much easier with "Microsoft Teams". They like to use the collaboration functions for meetings and video conferences with screen sharing, chat, recording or the discussion channels frequently. SANITIZED AG continues to operate internationally, but has moved closer together in terms of internal collaboration with Microsoft Teams.


For IT manager Erich Jau, it is particularly important that he can retain central control over the tools used via the Office 365 administration and provide users with clear guidelines on how the applications are to be used in the company. He also greatly appreciates the fact that all content in Microsoft Teams is automatically encrypted and secured to high standards. This is understandable for the internationally active company, which has to comply with regulations in the healthcare sector. Erich Jau mentions further advantages of the Office 365 / Exchange Online solution:

• Microsoft takes care of the operation and maintenance of the Exchange server - a relief for SANITIZED AG
• SANITIZED AG keeps the tool strategy under control. The central office administration allows the targeted activation of individual applications such as the Planner for individual persons - full control over who can use which tools.
• SANITIZED AG keeps the data and documents on its own storage systems. This is an important point, as the secret formulas and production processes of the world-leading SANITIZED AG brand must not fall into the hands of third parties. The international employees continue to access the data stored in Burgdorf via Citrix. Sharepoint and OneDrive are not yet activated: "We want to know exactly where our business-critical data is and be able to determine where it is. Storage in a secure Swiss cloud may become an issue, but we will examine it step by step and decide what makes sense."
• With Office 365, the Office applications are always up to date and the costs are predictable. The modern collaboration tools are included in the same usage fee and there are no additional license costs for video conferencing, screen sharing or chat systems.

Erich Jau describes this Office 365 project as an all-round success:
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"ITpoint prepared this migration very well, which is why the changeover went very smoothly. I know that this is not a matter of course, I have experienced many other things in IT. But I can always rely on the ITpoint team - and have done so for decades."
Erich Jau, IT Manager at SANITIZED AG

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