Customer story
A San Francisco-headquartered investment advisor, with offices spanning New York, Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, and London, had a partially migrated hybrid Office 365 environment and needed a Microsoft Partner to complete the move — migrating 350+ on-premises mailboxes to Office 365, syncing to a new AD tenant via AAD Connect, and setting up disaster recovery, spam protection, and a full security review along the way.
Engagement facts
Client
Investment advisory firm in Financial Services, headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with offices in New York, Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, and London
Industry
Financial Services
Region
San Francisco (HQ) · New York · Fort Lauderdale · Chicago · London
Service
Exchange 2013 to Office 365 migration (hybrid to full cloud)
Stack
Microsoft 365
Azure
Exchange 2013 → 2019
Azure Active Directory
Barracuda
on-premises mailboxes migrated to Office 365
5
office locations connected — San Francisco (HQ), New York, Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, London
lending products supported by the client’s tailored financial solutions
Minimal
enterprise downtime during the Active Directory migration
The client
A San Francisco-headquartered investment advisor spanning five offices
The client is a key player in the Financial Services Industry, a reputed investment advisor, headquartered in San Francisco, California, with multiple offices stretched across New York, Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, and London. With over 20 lending products and specialization in secured loans, the client provides tailored financial solutions to its customers.
The need
A stalled hybrid Office 365 environment needing a full cloud migration
The client had a partially migrated hybrid Office 365 environment and was looking to migrate Exchange 2013 to Office 365 — a completely cloud-based setup. The client needed a strong Microsoft Partner who could help them with the pending mailbox migration from Exchange 2013 to Office 365 and sync with the new AD tenant, with Azure AD associated via AAD Connect.
The client approached Star Knowledge’s experienced Microsoft 365 consultants with their migration challenges. The Office 365 migration required the team to:
- Migrate 350+ on-premises mailboxes to Office 365
- Carry out Active Directory migration — migrating security groups and distribution groups to the new Active Directory
- Configure a new 2019 Exchange server as a relay server for their email reports
- Set up disaster recovery for the Exchange server for high availability and failover
- Ensure security patching and an Office 365 security review and remediation
The scope concluded with an assessment of the client’s Office 365 tenant, compliance, and any security issues required to resolve issues on their tenant.
The challenge
Spam control, tenant migration, and support across multiple geographies
The assessment of the client’s existing Office 365 environment opened up several further challenges:
- Barracuda spam filter needed to be configured as the first level of spam control for Office 365 and Exchange 2019
- Migrating the user profiles from one tenant to the other AD tenant without breaking the user mail flow
- Migrating the user profiles from the older AD to the new AD tenant, then syncing and mapping all user identities on the cloud
- Setting up DR testing and failover as required
- User support and adoption, as the client was based across several geographies
The solution
A full Exchange-to-cloud migration with DR, security, and spam protection built in
As a Microsoft Gold Partner with 10 years of experience providing Microsoft solutions — and ranked among the top 10 most promising cloud migration solution providers — Star Knowledge’s Office 365 migration specialists executed the migration against each of the challenges the project posed.
Mailbox migration
Migrated the pending mailboxes from Exchange 2013 to Office 365.
User profile & AD sync
Migrated user profiles and synced them with the new AD domain.
Spam filter configuration
Configured the Barracuda Spam Filter.
Exchange relay & bypass setup
Set up the Exchange relay server and the spam filter bypass.
Disaster recovery & failover
Configured disaster recovery and failover for the Exchange server on a different data center via Azure.
Security assessment
Assessed threat protection, sharing policies, mail flow protection, spam filter setup, Trust Center score resolution, and information classification and protection.
Following the migration, Star Knowledge set up Exchange 2019 on Azure to act as the client’s SMTP relay server within their domain — integrating with wireless printers and applications — which required a complete replica setup on Azure AD Site Recovery in case of failures on the current data center.
Benefits
What changed for the client
Minimal downtime
Minimal enterprise downtime during the Active Directory migration from the old domain to the new domain.
Automated DR & HA
Automated disaster recovery and high-availability site for the Exchange relay server.
Multi-level protection
Multi-level tenant protection with spam filter and policy setup.
Stronger tenant security
Improved security of the tenant and reduced security risk.
Technology
What we used
Whether it’s Exchange 2013 to Office 365 or another on-premises Exchange setup, our migration specialists can help.
Your migration
Ready to move off a hybrid setup and into the cloud?
Let’s plan your Exchange to Office 365 migration. Talk to our Microsoft 365 migration specialists — no cost, no obligation.
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