Frontline decided that Office 365 was the way forward for their business.

To simplify and accelerate the process, they wanted a partner to move them to the Office 365.

Frontline worked through a list of existing contacts and businesses who had experience with Office 365 to try and find a partner they could work with. They were also given a list of recommended partners by Microsoft.

The first step was a Project Initiation Workshop and Discovery phase. A pre-engagement workshop was held to cover Frontline’s business requirements, which were:

• Implementation of Microsoft Azure AD Connect to Sync Active Directory Users to Azure AD
• Implementation of Azure seamless sign-on
• Office 365 migration from on-premise to Exchange Online via an Exchange hybrid setup, to include 10 mailboxes migrated by Core, configuration of Azure group-based licence management and handover of the migration process
• Public folder migration from on-premise Exchange to Office 365
• Configuration of Office 365 license management by group membership
• Configuration of any required additional address books in Office 365
• Public Folder Migration from on-premise Exchange to Office 365
  

In order to provide the functionality Frontline required, Core proposed a solution comprising a number of technology components which included the deployment and configuration of Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Exchange 2013 as a Hybrid, and Microsoft Azure Active Directory Connect (AD Connect). Core walked technical staff through the migration process, as they would be performing this after Core migrated the initial 10 mailboxes.

The second stage in the solution was an Architectural Design Phase (ADP), an Office 365 Migration Architectural Design document was created and approved. This included the AD Connect design, Exchange 2016 Hybrid Server design, current email namespace design, current routing topology, target routing topology, firewalling and external emailing topology and ports and protocols, amongst other things.

Michael Dunn | Technical Infrastructure Analyst, Frontline

“We decided that working with O365 was the way forward for our business. As is normal in business today, internal resource was limited for taking on a longer-term project such as an O365 Hybrid install and deployment of O365 applications. With resources committed to other internal revenue generating projects, we decided there was great value in engaging with a third party to complete the work.”

“We worked through a list of existing contacts and businesses who have experience with O365, and a list provided by Microsoft who we engaged with from the outset.”

“From the outset, Core seemed flexible, knowledgeable and gave us great confidence in their ability to do the work to the standards required and on time as we did have an aggressive roll-out schedule. The brief provided by us to Core was met and exceeded by completing the required works early and helping to initially train our administrators to adapt to the new systems provided.”

“Working with Core was a pleasant experience. The consultants were approachable, understood our requirements and were willing to help train knowledge as well as completing the work required. Scheduling was dealt with quickly and flexibly to adapt to our needs.”