Case study: Rufus Leonard
Hybrid Migration From Exchange 2010 Servers to Office 365 Case Study
“TechQuarters consultants and their team were great to work with, always communicating through each phase of the migration with our technical team … a real IT partnership.”
Dave Martin – Head of Service Delivery, Rufus Leonard
Sector: Professional Services
Rufus Leonard are an award winning, independent digital media agency that work with companies on market-leading brand experiences. Some brands they have worked with include Lloyds Banking Group, Williams, British Gas, London Stock Exchange Group, Visa, Rias, Transport for London and the V&A. They were recently named Agency of the Year 2015 by BIMA (British Interactive Media Association).
The Scenario – Migrate from a local Exchange server to Exchange online
Dave Martin, Head of Service Delivery at Rufus Leonard, contacted TechQuarters because they were looking to move their emails away from an on premise Microsoft Exchange server to the Cloud before the anniversary date of their Software Assurance renewals. As a 150-user business they felt they needed a Cloud Solution Partner to assist them, to ensure the process of moving to the cloud was a speedy one.
TechQuarters task was to assist them in moving their email system to the Microsoft Cloud using a Hybrid migration path. This strategy ensured that there was no downtime for all users, that all live data was migrated from the local Exchange server to Exchange online, and that calendar and mailbox permissions were set up.
How TechQuarters helped
First TechQuarters migrated all mailboxes to Office 365, including 130GB of live data with around 20GB of archived email data. The 3 existing servers – 2 Exchange servers and an SMTP server – were decommissioned by Rufus IT staff. After the initial migration, TechQuarters then worked to set up all calendar sharing and mailbox permissions and set up the AD connection and synchronisation. Lastly, we initiated backup of all email data via the third-party software SkyKick.
The Results
- All users now access their email via the cloud
- The email data was backed up continuously offsite
- The migration lowered costs as Rufus Leonard no longer have to update physical, on-premis servers
- Rufus Leonard now have flexible working in the cloud
What Rufus Leonard said
“Prior to migration [from Exchange 2010 Servers to Office 365], we had all our email running through our Exchange server onsite – which was requiring an increased amount of management. After attending a seminar with TechQuarters at Microsoft, I felt they would be great to speak to about our project to move to the cloud.
TechQuarters presented us with a well-structured proposal to conduct a hybrid migration from our Exchange 2010 servers to Office 365. The hybrid migration path worked very well for us due to having 150+ users, as we needed to make sure that everyone was migrated to 365 with no data loss and no disruption to our day to day working.
The migration from Exchange 2010 Servers to 365 was extremely smooth with no disruption to users and 365 was a great addition to our technology stack. TechQuarters consultants and their team were great to work with, always communicating through each phase of the migration with our technical team. It was a pleasure to work with their consultants in a real IT partnership.”
Dave Martin – Head of Service Delivery, Rufus Leonard