Our client is a venture capital (VC) backed insurance broker whose objective is to acquire other broking business within the UK and consolidate these onto the group platform. The requirement to us consisted of the following:

• Build a secure, scalable cloud platform to initially support 1,500 users, that could grow to support over 3,000 users
• Design, build and deploy a virtual desktop within the cloud platform
• Manage and maintain the virtual desktop, including role related variants
• Integrate the virtual desktop with other business applications which are a mixture of On-premise, Hosted or Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Integrate the virtual desktop with their managed print solution
• Deploy and manage mobile device management for company phones and tablets
• Provide a Group wide IP (MPLS) network integrating the organisations 25 offices with the cloud platform and virtual desktop
• Select and procure a group wide VOIP telephony platform
• Migrate group businesses and end users onto the cloud platform
• Provide a full (ITIL compliant) service management capability for our client

Wir haben diese Anforderungen in einem stufenweisen Ansatz angegangen:

Phase 1

We designed a virtual private cloud in AWS to host core services including:

• Active Directory
• Intrusion Detection
• Microsoft Update Servers (WSUS)
• Software Deployment, Management Servers
• Print Servers
• Zero Client Configuration and Management servers

The solution made use of many AWS services including:

• Amazon-WorkSpaces
• CloudWatch
• Identity and Access Management (IAM)
• AWS CloudFormation

Phase 2

This phase focused on two subsidiary companies with approximately 220 users. In this phase we created software packages in Chocolatey to deploy the applications used by insurance broking, risk management, finance, product development and human resource teams within these subsidiaries. In parallel to this, we managed the MPLS network build and connectivity to the 2 sites, along with the internal LAN and Wi-Fi set up. The final activity in this phase was to migrate users, their e-mail accounts and files shares to the new environment. This involved building 220 Workspaces and 145 laptops, removing all existing desktops, and deploying 75 zero client devices across 2 locations. User accounts and permissions were migrated to Okta and Active Directory (AD), email accounts were migrated from a 3rd party hosted exchange server to Office 365 and Mimecast (Journaling) and approximately 3TB of data was migrated from On-premise file servers to an online SaaS file sharing service.

Phase 3

The third phase focused on the group’s largest subsidiary with approximately 285 users, spread across 6 locations. In this phase we created additional software packages to deploy the applications used by application development, underwriting, marketing, business intelligence and senior management teams, again whilst managing the MPLS network extension to the 6 sites, along with the internal LAN and Wi-Fi set up. The final activity in this phase was to migrate users, their e-mail accounts and files shares to the new environment. This involved building 285 Workspaces and 165 laptops, along with deploying 120 zero client devices across 6 locations. As part of this last phase we also deployed mobile device management to 250 business use mobile phones and tablet devices.

Alle Aspekte des Projekts wurden erfolgreich umgesetzt, wodurch eine neue, sicherere und flexiblere Benutzerumgebung geschaffen wurde.

Die Gesamtkosten für die Verwaltung des Desktops in der gesamten migrierten Benutzerbasis sind deutlich niedriger als bei den bestehenden Unternehmen. Die Einführung eines virtuellen Desktops und eines Cloud First-Ansatzes für die Verwaltung des Desktops hat es unserem Kunden ermöglicht, Einsparungen zu erzielen und gleichzeitig die Anzahl der unterstützten Desktop-Benutzer zu verdoppeln.

In Verbindung damit leiden die Benutzer, die in die neue Umgebung migriert sind, jetzt unter weitaus weniger Netzwerk- und Anwendungsproblemen, und wir haben seit Inbetriebnahme der neuen Infrastruktur einen Rückgang der Anzahl der angesprochenen Servicefälle festgestellt.