SINGAPORE, January 8, 2015 – Microsoft Singapore announced today that Korvac Holdings, a Singapore-based IT company that builds businesses and services around electronic payments for credit and debit cards, social information and mobiles communications has successfully migrated to Office 365 for its 200 employees in the Asia Pacific region.
As 50 percent of the company’s employees work remotely in Singapore or out of other offices around the Asia Pacific region, Korvac found that it needed a way for employees to better collaborate and communicate in a fast and efficient manner. The company had previously been using an on-premise infrastructure running Lotus Notes that had to be tunnelled through a VPN connection. As part of its mobility strategy, Korvac ran BlackBerry Enterprise Server that entailed licensing and maintenance costs.
“We were struggling with a system that was not as dynamic as we needed,” said Mr Shane Raj, Management Information Systems Manager, Korvac Holdings. “Additionally, we incurred a lot of costs in terms of maintenance and management. We had to hire a dedicated IT administrator just to manage our email client and also had to pay monthly fees for a dedicated server to host emails on an offsite data centre.” It was estimated that these costs added up to around S$60,000 to S$70,000 annually.
After evaluation, Office 365 was selected as the most suitable solution for Korvac in terms of cost, performance as well as meeting the company’s needs in enabling its employees to communicate and collaborate effectively with those working out of office. The company also began evaluating migration solutions offered by various partners in the region, but eventually decided to migrate their email client from on-premise to the cloud platform in-house. The process proved to be easy and was executed easily via an online tool and complete migration for all 200 of Korvac’s employees was completed in less than 48 hours.
With the introduction of cloud-based Office 365 and Exchange Online, employees are now able to easily access their email, anywhere and on any device, without having to worry about a VPN connection slowing down access. The company has also leveraged Lync, a unified communications platform, which was part of its Office 365 subscription to improve collaboration with its remote-workers.
“Office 365 has certainly improved overall visibility of our workforce. Firstly, all employees mark their presence on Lync online even while they are travelling. Secondly, Lync also enables the tech support team to remotely resolve technical issues in a manner akin to remote desktop sharing. Lastly, our sales and marketing teams find it much easier to share files and meet with external parties virtually,” said Mr Raj.
Scaling in a secure cloud with Office 365
Korvac Holdings is expected to launch its new ASEAN Payment Card system in six countries in the coming months. In line with this expansion, the company is also bolstering their head count and the management remains confident that Office 365 is capable of growing and scaling to meet the company’s growing needs. Under the Office 365 Enterprise E3 plan, Korvac only has to pay a monthly subscription fee for each user that is subscribed, and the company can easily adjust the number of users, upwards or downwards, as staffing requirements fluctuate.
“Small and medium-sized businesses like Korvac Holdings are embracing the power of the cloud, enabling them to achieve greater agility and scale in accordance to their business needs. With Office 365 being hosted on the cloud, companies can do away with large upfront infrastructure costs and compliance concerns, which ultimately translates into improved productivity and cost efficiencies across the board,” said Ms Ngiam Foong Chee, Director, Marketing and Operations, Microsoft Singapore.
As a services company providing financial solutions to banks, airlines and government agencies in the region, Korvac also needed to ensure compliance with corporate rules and regulations in the countries it operates in. With Office 365, the company was assured of retaining control and complete visibility over their data. Also, Microsoft’s commitment to continuous compliance meant Korvac need not worry about compliance issues.
Microsoft constantly evolves Office 365 controls and stays up to date with standards and regulations across multiple industries and geographies. Most recently, Microsoft announced that it has achieved the Multi-Tier Cloud Security Standard for Singapore (MTCS SS) Level-1 certification for Office 365, complementing the service’s global independent verification specified in ISO 27001, EU model clauses, HIPAA BAA and FISMA. Office 365 also provides user and admin controls, including features such as eDiscovery, legal hold and data loss prevention to help companies like Korvac meet internal compliance requirements.
For more information on Office 365 for business, visit www.office365.com.
###
About Korvac
Established in 1999 in Singapore, Korvac Holdings Pte Ltd is the management and holding company of five separate groups of businesses. These include National Payment Networks, Merchant Services, Card Services, Information Services and Transaction Services. Headquartered in Singapore, Korvac Holdings also has offices in Malaysia and Thailand. A leading provider of payment and consumer data processing services in the region, Korvac’s full range of payment services including PIN-based debit services through the EPINS® network and non-transit payment using ez-link and concession cards. In addition to payment services, the Group provides an extensive suite of merchant related services from regional payment infrastructure, transaction acquiring and processing, loyalty programmes, private label authorisation systems and consumer data analytics.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services, devices and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.