Challenge
In December 2018, a mayoral agency had planned to migrate 10,000 devices across eight government entities from Windows 7 to Windows 10 to meet the Windows 7 end-of-life deadline in January 2020. If they couldn't successfully migrate to Windows 10 before the deadline, the agency would accrue significant extended support fees — about $500,000 annually.
In addition to needing to upgrade to Windows 10, the agency also wanted to migrate to Microsoft 365 across 45 government entities. At the time, the agency was running an on-premises environment, which was costly and difficult to maintain from both an operations and security standpoint. And because it was supporting multiple government entities that operated independently, there was no organization-wide standard for productivity and collaboration software, resulting in user frustration and increased IT support.
The agency had attempted to implement both the Windows 10 and Microsoft 365 migrations itself but came across several challenges that made the projects difficult to accomplish. It had a complex environment with government entities under multiple tenants, which required multiple migrations to be synchronized. The agency's IT team also didn't have the technical expertise or the bandwidth to manage a project of this magnitude.
To help modernize its IT infrastructure, improve the employee experience and simplify operations, the agency needed a partner with the expertise and services to complete both migrations successfully. That's where WWT came in.
Solution
Before we established an operating model to guide the two migrations, we made it a priority to learn the complexity of the city government and build relationships with each of the government entities involved in the project. It helped that our Enterprise Solutions and Architecture team already had experience understanding customer needs and how to solve day-to-day challenges that come with a project as complex as these migrations. These steps helped lay the foundation for a trusted partnership.
Windows 10 Migration
We brought in experts with more than 25 years of experience and assigned one or two subject matter experts to each agency to help with the Windows 10 migration. Between our team's experience and skillsets, we completed the Windows 10 upgrade six months before the deadline, exceeding the agency's expectations and avoiding end-of-life support costs. After completing the Windows 10 upgrade, the next step was to migrate its agencies to Microsoft 365.
Microsoft 365 Migration
The Microsoft 365 migration was a large-scale, divide-and-conquer effort. We led the implementation, which included moving the infrastructure from on-premises to the cloud, while simultaneously providing the agency's team with on-the-job training. We also provided day-to-day support to the government entities as they were learning the new technologies.
As we focused on the project goals, the agency helped with internal escalations, which expedited time to implementation. Between the two teams, we were able to migrate about 6,000 users a week and completed the project in 10 months.
Outcome
In total, roughly 10,000 devices were upgraded to Windows 10, and 125,000 mailboxes were migrated to Microsoft 365 across all government entities.
Moving the agency's infrastructure to the cloud resulted in a unified experience for both employees and the IT operations team, presented scale opportunities, created standardization of workflows, and improved data security due to Microsoft 365's offering of Azure Information Protection and data loss prevention. It also consolidated platforms across the organization, which allowed for improved collaboration through solutions like Microsoft Teams.
And because of our partnership with Microsoft, the agency also had access to its OEM's expertise and resources. Even throughout the pandemic — which added another level of complexity to the project — all teams involved were able to maintain pace and quality.
We continue to work with the mayoral agency on its digital transformation initiatives. With Windows 10 and Microsoft 365 successfully deployed, the agency and its government entities are set up to continue operating and serving their city effectively, now and in the future.
