Cloud Migration Saves Money and Improves Workflow for Growing Entertainment Firm

As a fast-paced entertainment firm, our client needed to be able to work from anywhere and collaborate quickly.  We needed a way to bridge the gap between their business workflows and our available technologies.

Nearly all of this firm’s data lived on dated servers at the studio.  This meant that employees would either have to drive to the studio to work or use a dangerous, poorly configured VPN.  Even before the pandemic, it was challenging to get things done quickly because they did not want to have confidential work done over the old VPN.

The systems in place allowed for a few different remote access channels, but none were up to our cybersecurity standards.  The data that they were accessing is confidential, and we did not want to risk any breaches due to older remote access tools.

The firm was faced with 2 unpalatable options: : 1) continue to have their entire staff come into the office; or 2) risk confidential data by using dated remote access tools.  Although they were functional, this IT roadblock was impeding them from scaling their business despite their success elsewhere.

Find a superior, secure remote option and enhance overall workflow with a seamless, white-glove user experience.

Considering their speed of business and recent new hires, we knew that we needed something that would grow with the business.  We also needed to ensure that their workflows would only improve from the change and that employees would not get stuck on training.

They were using Microsoft Exchange for their email service, and that platform worked well for them.  The users knew how to use Outlook and did not want to move away from it, so we upgraded them to Microsoft 365.

We performed the bulk of the migrations behind the scenes.  When the time was right, we switched to the new system and ensured that each employee moved over seamlessly in a single one-hour appointment.

In a single migration, we upgraded their communications platform, enforced multi-factor authentication, and cleaned up all of the old mailbox rules and groups that no longer apply.  The users were happy, but this was only the beginning.

We still have the main dataset, mostly Office, PDFs, multimedia, and miscellaneous files organized by drives.  We built out the secured, cloud-based file system and took the opportunity to reimagine their permissions.  The files on the employees’ computers were connected and synchronized back to the cloud gateway as we sunsetted the old file server.

Finally, we needed to migrate the accounting system to shut down the remaining servers completely.  We set up Microsoft Business Central through 365 so that they could keep everything under a single platform and bill.  We worked with the previous accounting vendor to move the data and configured the new system to present data in the same way.

After testing several platforms and plans, we landed on exactly the one that allowed the business to go fully remote and actually improve its business workflows.  The clients are very happy with the new system, and we now receive significantly fewer tickets than ever before.

Leveraging technology not only solved the initial problem but also resolved other previously unidentified threats.  Our modernization of their workflow allowed us to implement additional cybersecurity improvements like multifactor authentication (MFA) and upgrade their workflow with better and newer technologies with far fewer issues.