Provide a brief description of the Solution?
The client is a small global organization needing to collaborate, communicate and exchange documents across time zones and the globe in a secure fashion. The solution was to move them off of a hosted exchange platform to the full Microsoft Online suite of Exchange, Sharepoint, LIve Meeting and Office Communicator. This provided much better document management than using Exchange folders and the integrated capabilities of presence, instant messaging and conferencing were a large improvement over free tools in the market, at the same time providing much greater security.
Describe what elements of the cloud computing architecture were deployed in this solution, such as private vs. public cloud, how those decisions were made, and how security concerns were factored into the project design and implementation?
The solution uses public cloud and is based on the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite(BPOS-S). It is a multi-tenanted version of 4 products Exchange, Sharepoint, Office Communicator and Live Meeting. The Microsoft suite has security built into the product and its data centers are audited to achieve major industry compliance requirements for security. The security capabilities convinced the client to select Microsoft over Google to protect the privacy of their internal information.
Describe what makes your cloud computing solution unique or innovative, and how you pushed the boundaries of a typical cloud computing architecture in designing and implementing this solution for your client?
This was one of the early adoptions of MS Online (BPOS) in Canada. What was unique and complex about the project is that despite only 25 people being in the company they were located across 5 countries and 4 continents. The senior executive were also highly mobile. They were using a mixture of hosted exchange and conferencing tools that were not integrated like MS Online. Also some of the mailboxes were almost 10GB in size making migration reliability a challenge. The other complexity is that each user’s workstation required client software to be deployed and configured along with their Blackberries. Being in different countries most of the blackberries were on different service providers involving different re-provisioning processes. An example of the complexity and flawlessness of execution was the CEO flew into Vancouver from San Francisco on a Sunday morning. We needed to configure his workstation and blackberry and complete the migration and testing before he boarded a flight 6 hours later to China for 3 weeks. We could not fail.
Discuss why a cloud computing-based solution was the right choice for your client in this business case, rather than a traditional IT architecture?
Cloud computing was definitely the right decision for this client. They are so geographically dispersed with no key center that having internal infrastructure (and for their small size) made no sense economically or operationally. Now they have their COO who can add new users, and manage team sites from anywhere. At the same time the users have enterprise class tools that many large organizations still do not have deployed today. So the low cost, security, quick deployment, and low support requirements (no IT staff or consultants are required) makes this a perfect solution for this client.
Describe the business need this solution was expected to fill for your client, and how this solution has meet or exceeded those expectations. What measurable metrics, such as reduced costs or other efficiencies, can be provided to support the customer’s return on investment?
The client previously had challenges with document management and a lack of enterprise class collaboration tools. Now they no longer store large documents in email, they have version control, and they have been able to collaborate on documents and contracts with outside lawyers and third parties in a secure fashion using Sharepoint Online. They have also found the reliability and security of these enterprise class tools as critical.
Discuss how designing and implementing this cloud computing solution challenged or broke new ground for you as a solution provider. How did it differ from other cloud computing implementations you have done, and what new challenges were faced by your technical and sales staff?
This broke new ground for Steeves and Associates as a solution provider. We are a Western Canadian based solution provider focused on clients headquartered in the West and we normally sell to larger organizations that have an IT department that we work with. In this case we dealt directly with all users and the executive. It was also new ground as it was a global migration requiring coordination across service providers and time zones. The other complexity is with doing POP based migrations to Exchange Online you have to do a ‘big bang’ approach to migration as there is no co-existence or forwarding as normally there is with Exchange versions or even foreign mail systems to Exchange using tools like those from Quest. We had to use web service based migration tools to get the scalability and reliability to move these large mailboxes successfully. Also with a big bang and a global mobile workforce the testing and execution needed to be flawless. Selling this project was also different as we came up with and competed with Google and one of their partners for the first time. It was priced on a base configuration plus so much per user to do the migration. We matched their pricing to win the business. We typically do time and materials pricing and not per device or per users pricing which is the way the online market is so it was a new way for us to sell, price and manage risk. It was also new to our technical staff as we have to rely on an outside service provider and their support staff to resolve issues and in many cases through service requests make changes. Typically we are installing and configuring software ourselves and have more control over troubleshooting and support.
How does this solution further your customer’s green or environmentally friendly plans?
This solution is helping the client to be more green because of the enhanced collaboration capabilities using Live Meeting, Office Communicator and Sharepoint. They are able to communicate more effectively requiring less travel and save time and printing through better document management with Sharepoint over Exchange.