From idea to realization using Office 365 environment

1. Challenges

Like many other companies, Comtrade has most of the infrastructure in an on-premise environment. However, even larger companies are forced to follow market-driven trends. By this we mean primarily the Microsoft Cloud environment and integration with it. The Comtrade Group consists of several companies that benefit from a single on-premise infrastructure. Which, from a technical point of view, means that companies use a single email, data system, communication security, and so on. The trends dictated by Microsoft through the introduction of Cloud services have also started to be followed by individual companies within the group. Under each company, it was allowed to create its own Office 365 services for testing and learning purposes. Due to the increasing use and usability of the Office 365 environment, the test environment eventually became a production environment over which only enthusiasts of this type of technology operated.

2. Our solution

Due to the increasing usability and sharing of production documents, the idea of ​​consolidating Office 365 environments into one common, with a single policy, uniform guidelines and one of the more important factors, centralized customer support has developed.

It was necessary to take into account all the security requirements of the corporation and at the same time leave some freedom to the users. A significant percentage of the project was dedicated to raising employee awareness through brief dedicated instructions on further steps and possible changes, and through online workshops. Consolidation of services such as Microsoft Teams collaboration and content present on SharePoint Online sites had to be migrated together in one step because this represented a single service for users.

In addition to e-mail, Skype for Business Server with Enterprise Voice functionality was used as a hub for connection and communication. The change in technology from Skype for Business in this case represented a major business step both in the very use and understanding of the new tool that Microsoft Teams succeeded.

Several companies representing the Comtrade Group have so far their own policy in using Office 365 services, so it was necessary to ensure the consolidation of Office 365 environments into one centralized tenant. When consolidating Office 365, we had to pay attention to the data in the communication via e-mail, Microsoft Teams collaboration, SharePoint Online pages and the data that was located in the OneDrive environment of each user. Since Microsoft does not currently offer any solution that could migrate Office 365 data, we therefore resorted to dedicated tools. In this way, we were able to ensure that the data transition during the transfer was as transparent as possible and not burdensome for the user himself.

Advantages of using a single O365 environment

• Use a single sign-on / identity for the entire Office 365 environment.
• Single entry point for all employees.
• Easier way to share files.
• Use one OneDrive for Business environment.
• Centralized policy for the whole organization.
• Unified environment for Microsoft Teams. There is no need to change the organization.
• The presence status in Microsoft Teams is the same as in Exchange.
• Easier use and utilization of automation and other services (Power Automate, PowerApps, PowerBI, Microsoft Form).

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