De-Mergers, client growth, global expansion . . . that’s been the reality of life here at Brookfield Global Integrated Solutions for the past few months.
It makes for an interesting and exciting workplace, but for those of us in IT in Australia and New Zealand the changes have also provided the catalyst for us to focus very heavily on a cloud perspective. As a leading provider of integrated Real Estate, Facilities, and Project Management Services our 850-strong workforce is dispersed, mobile and very much tapped into the work from anywhere, anytime trend that is so much a part of today’s workplace.
We have a 15 strong IT team and our desire is to be focussed on business problems, not the core IT platform. Going to a cloud environment and also integration to Office 365 has let us move very quickly towards realising that strategy. To deliver on this strategy, we have been working closely with Microsoft partner, Thomas Duryea Consulting.
Our strategy was simple: we wanted to be cloud first; we needed simplicity of migration and integration because of tight timeframes; we wanted to empower staff with the ability to work anywhere, anytime; we needed fast user acceptance along with security, and future-proofing.
With our de-merger we were able to build a new, cloud based greenfield infrastructure. Set up very quickly, and working with our IT parent organisation measure its success and then look to move initially 200 users, growing to 850.
With all that in mind, we made the decision to update our operating system to Windows 10.
A key factor that led to our decision to adopt Windows 10 was having a great and familiar experience across our upgraded notebook fleet for our end users, and then also moved that into tablets.
“A key factor that led to our decision to adopt Windows 10 was having a great and familiar experience across our upgraded notebook fleet for our end users, and then also move that into tablets. “
The fact that Microsoft is moving to Windows as a service has also been a big plus factor. We had a decision to make on the operating system and we weighed the risk between going with an earlier version or taking a forward looking approach and going with Windows 10.
But we’ve gone with the new version because we know that the platform will grow with us over the next few years and deliver continual change. It’s the same reason we went with Office 365, to get that continual adoption of new features and not be stuck in that historical way of the IT department having control over the future because we mightn’t have the bandwidth to go through an upgrade cycle.
We’ve had a pilot group of around 20 using Windows 10 and we’re going to grow that to 50 or 60 within a month, but the feedback we have got so far has been excellent. People have been saying that the changeover process has been really well-received and they are loving the functionality and ease of use of the laptop. There’s no doubt it is a change of user interface, but that’s not been an issue.
“In fact, that was one of the key drivers behind us making the decision – it was the most up to date operating system but it was a really familiar environment for our end users.”
In fact, that was one of the key drivers behind us making the decision – it was the most up to date operating system but it was a really familiar environment for our end users. Another driver was that we would be future-proofing the organisation.
We have also been impressed with the security aspects of Windows 10, which is really important to us. We know it’s got the best versions of BitLocker and DirectAccess, along with a whole lot of other tooling that we are expecting will make it the best and most secure operating system yet. Windows 10 is built to be mobile, and that combined with the security gives us great comfort around having data in the field.
The great thing is that through Windows 10 and Office 365 we’ve been able to have a really quick and efficient changeover during what could have been be a particularly messy operation. In fact, we’ve gone from making the decision to actual deployment in less than three months, having the business cut over to a new domain, a new operating system, Exchange, Office 365 and devices.
Because of the merger, we didn’t have a lot of knowledge about how much data we would be needing but the beauty of the cloud is that it doesn’t really matter.
If the truth be known, there’s been very little issue in the whole process, which is just what we were hoping for.
—ends—
