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Verified Success: Hybrid Approach Utilizing Office 365 SharePoint

The Client

When one of the world’s foremost consulting and certification companies set out to upgrade their valued SharePoint based document system, they selected Netrix for its strategic plan, experienced team, and expert auto-migration tools that improved stability and uptime, reduced licensing expenses, and included a staff development component that allowed the client team to own and manage it going forward.

The Challenge

When your business is validating, auditing and certifying tens of thousands of different product categories globally, the extensive amount of documentation produced creates document management challenges that require the attention of a focused team.

In this organization, it was the Manager of IT in the Information Solutions Group’s job to make sure the company’s SharePoint platform can safely store and index the thousands of pages of documentation generated each year.

When his team decided to upgrade SharePoint, they evaluated a short list of its most reputable IT partners. Netrix won because of its track record and strategic approach to the project.

“Netrix came in with a plan for our SharePoint migration that included more automation tools,” said the IT leader. “We like consultants that give us options and enable us to manage our systems long-term. It’s a better value for us and Netrix understands that.”

 The business has more than 11,000 employees, across 185 offices, in 40 countries and each year it conducts nearly 100,000 product evaluations. So colleagues across the organization rely on their corporate intranet to share information efficiently.

The project lead had worked with Netrix before and stated, “The sheer volume of information that needed to be migrated during the SharePoint upgrade was pretty incredible – about 1.75 million items – so we knew this was a project for Netrix and we could trust them with it.”

The company has maintained most of its applications and related files, including its intranet, through on-premise hosting. Part of the requirement for the SharePoint upgrade was to also explore cloud hosting configurations for hybrid data storage consideration.

Before any file transfers or migration took place, all content was audited. The audit focused on three main issues:

  • Content classification – what kind of content is it and how is it used?
  • Content quantity – how much content is there?
  • Content convenience – what needs to be readily accessible and what can be archived?

The Solution

Netrix recommended a blend of Office 365’s SharePoint Online for cloud hosting and SharePoint Server for those apps and files that the client’s team wanted to keep within its own firewall.

“Our team has been able to save time and gain productivity since we don’t need to handle any of the content management workflows any longer,” said the IT leader. “Another bonus is that the stability of the cloud has increased our overall uptime, and we’ve been able to reduce licensing expenses by using fewer on-premise licenses.”

Netrix consultants also brought the right tools for the job. While other companies were unable or unwilling to work with new automated migration tools, Netrix embraced the idea and ran with it.

“Some told us that auto-migration tools either didn’t exist or weren’t adequate for our project,” said the project lead. “Netrix found a better way and made it work for us. They also made sure to get our people up to speed so we could handle the process in-house when we were ready.”

The client team has worked with many outside consultants over the years, and they keep selecting Netrix for several important reasons.

“Netrix is creative in solution design, persistent but polite during the sales process, and they always have the right staffing level for the project,” the IT leader added. “Plus, they use their own consultants which means their fees aren’t inflated by the use of subcontractors. We like that.”

The Result

Pains

  • The SharePoint platform needed to be upgraded and made compatible for the cloud.
  • SharePoint was overloaded with too many older documents that needed removal and archiving.
  • 1.75 million items needed to be audited, evaluated and moved.

Gains

  • The new SharePoint platform blends hybrid on-premise hosting with cloud services to address data security.
  • Auto-migration tools added speed and accuracy, and the dedicated Netrix team kept costs in line with budgets.
  • Better speed, navigation, and more consistent branding are immediate benefits of the SharePoint migration.

Experience The Impact

No matter what challenge you’re facing today, our team of technical experts can get you started on a path to a better solution. We’ll partner with you to: 

  • Understand your current technology environment
  • Interview key stakeholders to understand the root of the business issue(s)
  • Propose a solution with projected timelines, budget, and dependencies