Everest adopt O365 and Microsoft Azure

Overview

Everest Home Improvements is a market-leading, UK-based manufacturer and installer of door and glazing systems. With a clear desire to transition their IT infrastructure to a new Microsoft platform, Everest selected Bytes to help ensure that the maximum benefit was gained from their impending investment. This meant the right solutions, at the most efficient cost, that would allow for future growth and meet the evolving productivity needs of the business moving forward.

Challenge

Moving to a new standardised Microsoft platform. It was no secret internally that Everest’s IT systems were stifling the business. There were frequent outages of key services such as Lotus Notes, locally hosted servers, printing and file storage. Everest wanted to move to a new standardised Microsoft platform and this required a complete technology refresh. The primary solutions that were creating this desire for change were Office 365 and Azure cloud solutions from Microsoft.

As a new supplier to Everest, Bytes needed to understand how the new technology would be used by both office based and mobile staff and propose the right licensing solution – this meant looking at costs for the immediate technology upgrade whilst allowing for future updates, which included Skype for Business and Dynamics CRM. Bytes needed to provide a no-nonsense approach quickly to ensure Everest strict timescales were met.

Bytes used their extensive relationships within Microsoft to help us define the right solutions for our business and then worked hard on our behalf to negotiate a good price with added benefits.

IT Director, Everest

The Bytes Solution

With Office 365 and Azure being a key component of the upgrade, the first step was for the Bytes Cloud Team to work with Everest to determine and verify the technology options. Following a personalised Customer Immersion Day at Microsoft, Bytes conducted a User Profile Assessment to determine the specific license types needed across the range of job roles within Everest. The findings identified profiles that were surplus to requirements together with an overall need for a split profile solution that could be tailored to meet the business needs of the 500 office based and 650 external sales consultants.

The next step was to look at the financial model options, where it was decided that the benefits of an OPEX approach out-weighed those of the traditional on premise CAPEX model. With the complete technology solution scoped and the most intelligent way to license and finance established, Bytes were able to negotiate a strong discount with Microsoft for a new Subscription Enterprise Agreement (EAS) with Software Assurance (SA), which incorporated a hybrid Office 365 E1 plan for mobile users and the E4 plan for office based staff - together with the additional solutions within the Enterprise Agreement such as Skype for Business, System Center and Storsimple.

The subscription licensing model provided Everest with the flexibility of an annual true-up/true-down based on actual consumption and the Software Assurance element meant they had future-proofed their new Microsoft platform, allowing for scalability to support growth and the evolving productivity needs of their business moving forward. In addition to a sizeable discount, Everest also received additional FastTrack funding for deploying their new Microsoft platform and training vouchers for Office 365 - which are currently being managed by the Bytes Learning Team with the aim of providing a tailored program to ensure high user adoption.

Benefits

A cultural change in the business, where faith in IT systems has been restored. Everest’s initial goal was to remove the headache of system failures by creating a stable platform and to simplify processes for its staff by ensuring that standard productivity tools were in place. By pro-actively pursuing a full Microsoft platform adoption and then deploying 95% of the solutions within the new Enterprise Agreement, Everest have truly maximised the benefit from their investment - therefore achieving their goal and more.

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