How Enterprise Migrated Terabytes of Data Without Slowing Down the Business
Case Study – Enterprise
Critical Needs
- Full fidelity of metadata during migration to Office 365
- Efficient permission management solution
- Simple automated Office 365 backup solution.
AVEPOINT SOLUTIONS
Success Highlights
- Successfully migrated multiple terabytes of data to Office 365 while keeping all metadata intact
- Streamlined permission management
- Running four backups a day across their entire Office 365 environment with minimal need for manual adjustments
- Leveraging AvePoint’s Microsoft Teams chatbot to help end-users find and restore files in Office 365
“We have used other products to perform backups. AvePoint’s Cloud Backup is one of the easiest to deal with because I don’t have to do anything once I have set up the initial configuration. I just know it’s being backed up and I don’t have to touch it.”
-Daniel Price, Network Administrator, Enterprise Community Investment
The Challenge
Enterprise had multiple terabytes of data on their file servers and needed the full metadata intact in order to move to SharePoint Online and Office 365.
During the planning and budgeting stage of the migration project, they identified a third-party migration tool would also be needed to accelerate their timeline and automatically schedule jobs during off-hours.
As Daniel Price, the Network Administrator for Enterprise Community Investment, started planning for life in Office 365 he also noticed the need for a third-party backup solution.
“Microsoft doesn’t really have a backup solution. So, the need for backup wasn’t even a question,” said Price.
Enterprise also has more than 1,000 employees who all need to be managed within Active Directory. This number of employees – along with complex permission management requirements and vast amounts of data – can make permission management in Office 365 particularly lengthy and tedious.
The AvePoint Solution
AvePoint was a one-stop shop for Enterprise’s migration, backup, and management needs.
When it comes to Enterprise’s migration project, the purchase of DocAve Migrator preserved all metadata intact while keeping business disruption to a minimum through a robust discovery process and scheduled migrations.
“With Migrator, our business operations weren’t negatively impacted at all during our migration,” said Price. “It was the definition of a smooth move to Office 365.”
Price views Office 365 backup as a must have data protection measure to ensure business continuity and end-user expectations.
Enterprise is backing up four times a day, and while they initially decided to utilize their own AWS storage, they later transitioned to using AvePoint’s Azure BLOB for simplicity.
What he appreciates about AvePoint’s Cloud Backup is its simplicity and automation.
“If we didn’t have backups, we would be in a lot of trouble,” said Price. “We have used other products to perform backups. AvePoint’s Cloud Backup is one of the easiest to deal with because I don’t have to do anything once I have set up the initial configuration. I just know it’s being backed up and I don’t have to touch it. It makes my job easier and saves me time.”
They are also leveraging AvePoint’s most recent Cloud Backup feature, AVA, a chatbot in Microsoft Teams that end users can leverage to find and restore files.“AVA will be a very useful tool moving forward. Especially as our user base transitions away from file servers and more toward Office 365 Groups,” said Chris O’Brien, an IT Manager with Enterprise.
Price added, “I’ve found that AvePoint is continuously innovating. From when we started to our current solution version, it has come very far and is now just set and forget.”
Following the adoption of Exchange Online and SharePoint Online, Enterprise was searching for a permission management solution and ultimately selected AvePoint’s Cloud Management.
The Administrator module has brought ease to Enterprise in the form of cloning permissions, cleaning dead accounts, and batch management within a single interface.
The IT team has also been actively running Administrative reports through this module to efficiently track exactly which employees have access to what content.
The Bottom Line
The Enterprise Community Investment IT team has now set themselves up to efficiently backup and manage their Office 365.
This has opened a significant amount of time to focus on migrating the multiple terabytes left in their file servers into their new environment while having peace of mind that everything is working in the background.
“The best part of owning AvePoint’s solution is that when we find ourselves under the gun and really need to get files restored, the fact that I am able to go in and quickly restore as opposed to digging through SharePoint to locate files is a huge time saver,” said O’Brien.
About Enterprise Community Investment
As a proven and powerful non-profit, Enterprise Community Investment (Enterprise) improves communities and people’s lives by making well-designed homes affordable. They bring together nationwide know-how, partners, policy leadership and investment to multiply the impact of local affordable housing development.
Read the full case study here.
