Migration to the Cloud Provides Flexibility and Increases Efficiency for a Manufacturing Firm

Business Need

Since their inception, the leading manufacturer of holograms had their email infrastructure on an on-premises environment. Over time, dealing with an on-premises email infrastructure was becoming cumbersome and inefficient, and they wanted to move their email infrastructure to the cloud.

The holographic products manufacturer was in search of a technology partner that could help them migrate their email infrastructure from Zimbra to Office 365 (O365).

In addition to O365 migration, they also wanted to develop an employee portal that enables the team to share and access information to collaborate with others in the organization.

Solution and Approach

Zimbra to Office 365 (O365) migration

Synoptek (formerly Indusa) performed an efficient and secure migration of email, calendar, and contacts from the Zimbra environment to O365.

Steps involved in performing the Zimbra to O365 migration:

1. Domain ownership: Synoptek verified the firm’s ownership of the domain. This was done to allow Microsoft to host the desired O365 services for the client, and allow the firm to use the domain.
2. Add users to Office 365 and assign licenses: Users were added individually in the O365 admin center. This step provided the users O365 licenses, login credentials, and an O365 mailbox.
3. Create a list of mailboxes: A migration file was created that contained a list of the mailboxes to be migrated to O365.
4. Change the client’s Mail Exchanger (MX) record to point to Office 365: The Mail Exchanger (MX) record was updated to point to Office 365 from the existing Zimbra mail server. This enabled other mail systems to send emails directly to the new mailboxes in O365.
5. Configure new email accounts: New email accounts were configured for the firm in Microsoft Outlook Client.
6. Import email data: Email data, from existing files, was imported to the newly configured email accounts allowing data synchronization on O365.
7. Post configuration: Synoptek provided O365 administration training to the manufacturer.

Synoptek moved the firm’s mailbox data quickly and seamlessly, with zero user downtime. The cloud based operation was performed without taking the firm’s email systems offline.

Single-Sign-on (SSO) Configuration

SSO configuration provided users the functionality to sign in with their corporate credentials and get secure access across O365 services such as emails, intranet (employee portal), Yammer, and OneDrive.

Employee Portal

Based on the requirements of the manufacturer, an employee portal was developed using SharePoint Online to provide a dynamic and flexible platform that serves as the central hub for their communication, collaboration, and internal services.

The intranet portal is a content rich and interactive portal that is used by employees of all the departments (HR, Marketing, IT, Purchase, Sales, Finance, and Procurement) to access their emails, calendars, and tasks. The portal facilitates anytime, anywhere access to information.

The portal consists of a home page comprising of announcements, banners, blogs, suggestions, recent events, picture galleries, social media feeds, a company calendar, news feeds, and an online chat. In addition to this, it has links related to various departmental landing pages, allowing employees access to department specific content and document libraries.

Business Results

By moving email infrastructure from Zimbra to the cloud-based email infrastructure, O365, users can now send and receive email from any device, and search email archives quickly to find the information they need.

The employee portal offers the firm a reliable platform, through which their employees can share, discover, follow, participate and work efficiently.