Proact selected by Samhall for Office 365 migration

The migration project to transition to Office 365 spanned across multiple months. Utilising a phased approach, the installation began with testing and pilot projects, which were carried out using different user categories. The key objective was to conduct the migration transparently, without interrupting the 3,000 users or the 60,000 messages that are transferred daily at Samhall.

Proact has previously hosted and managed Samhall’s email servers, and has assisted the professional service provider with designing and seamlessly implementing the new IT environment.

“Proact has been a good advisor and helped us shape our standardised environment where we now place workloads in the cloud, whenever that is possible,” says Odd Ingvarsson, IT Infrastructure Manager at Samhall.

Samhall’s incentives for choosing Office 365 concern economical as well as functional reasons. One reason is that email, as well as many other applications, is much easier to access in the cloud. Only a fraction of Samhall’s 24,000 employees use computers at work which means that Office 365, and the mobile device apps which the platform provides, provide all staff with access to Samhall’s intranet for business-critical company information.

“For Proact, it has always been essential that we combine our role as an IT advisor with the role as a supplier. This way of thinking is increasingly important in today’s landscape where many customers are facing critical and complex decisions relating to their cloud strategy. Our commitment to Samhall and its migration project illustrates how Proact is evolving in tune with the market and customer needs,” says Anders Lerjestam, Managing Director at Proact MCS AB in Sweden.

Samhall is also an experienced, large scale user of video conferencing. By migrating to Skype for business, now a part of Office 365, the company will have a more easily accessible and cost-effective video solution. Samhall also plans to use Microsoft Teams, an Office 365 app which supports group communications, including chat features.

As part of the Office 365 platform, and the apps that come with the service, there is a continuous flow of news and updates. This requires an active, ongoing effort by IT management to absorb new information and to implement the numerous software updates efficiently.

Samhall has addressed this challenge by choosing Proact’s Service Management for Office 365. Proact’s team of experts will keep track of the cloud platform, notifying Samhall when there’s critical updates and will discuss events and trends at monthly meetings. Samhall’s usage of Office 365, and its resources, will also be monitored and reviewed.

”The Proactive 365 service is really convenient and saves us a lot of time when it comes to searching for information. The service also ensures that we are not missing any important updates,” says Samhall’s Odd Ingvarsson.