CASE STUDY
The family-owned holiday complex welcomes tens of thousands of visitors a year – but it had reached a stall in its IT operations due to legacy equipment and software. Discover how we helped them renew their digital transformation.
Services
Professional Services
Managed Services
Support
Azure
Microsoft Support
Teams Voice
Licensing
Cloud Migration
Industry
Leisure and Hospitality
Organisation size
620 employees
Completion Date
Summer 2021
With Ribby Hall operating a more traditional buy-and-host, on-premises operating model, there was a need to review options to help Ribby Hall transform by adopting cloud technologies, as well as encourage collaboration across the Village, while maintaining a high level of security.
We’d been exploring the benefits of moving to the cloud for some time – but there were some concerns. One reservation was around poor connectivity in the local area. When this improved, we undertook considerable work to improve bandwidth, resiliency and technology prior to doing any work on moving to Azure.
The biggest challenge was user adoption and the ‘buy-in’ from employees, which we acknowledged by sharing the possibilities of Microsoft 365 and its apps with key stakeholders from around the business.
While we could see the potential to add real value to the day-to-day activities, it was clear that without careful planning and successful adoption from users, this value would be lost in the longer-term.
The current hardware and infrastructure had reached, or were coming to, an age where change needed to happen. The question at this point to Ribby Hall was: do you refresh what you have and remain on-premises or do you look at an alternative design encompassing cloud computing?
We carried out a ‘5 Rs’ cloud rationalisation assessment on the current VMware estate to look at what we would want to replace, rehost, redesign, remain or retire. Following this we undertook a Cloud Adoption Framework type assessment for both right-sizing of workloads and understanding the best type of service for them in Azure.
We quickly moved on to an Azure design that included a Landing Zone to give better security, governance and reporting, then looking at which servers we would migrate to Azure, which applications we would move to SaaS or external hosting, and which servers we could retire.
During the height of Covid, Ribby Hall had invested in an Azure migration, Teams Voice (with Anywhere365 Contact Centre) as well as a SharePoint Online migration.
As part of the SharePoint migration, we consulted to evaluate what files and folders would be migrated and make sure that these were in a format and structure ready for migration. After some minor remedial work to tidy things up and restructure, we undertook the migration over a weekend, moving the full corporate data structure to SharePoint Online.
Once the move to Teams Voice was agreed, our telephony team, in conjunction with Sipcom, implemented the design, ready for user acceptance testing.
Collaboration is encouraged and facilitated
Technology that is easy to use for all employees
Greater security for their systems
Futureproofing where possible through cloud technologies
Successful adoption of the new tools means users benefit from the added value
Cost-effective technology and additional functionality where possible
Ensuring that the employees got excited about the new technologies and ways of working means that Ribby Hall is able to continue to explore better and more efficient ways of working using the Microsoft tools available.
This is just the start of Ribby Hall’s journey. As users adopt more of the Microsoft tools and see the benefits of SharePoint Online and Teams, Ribby Hall is able to distinguish areas in which would improve their efficiencies.
This means future planning around technology no longer only lies with the IT department, but with all users who are adopting such technologies.
Steven Lonsdale
IT Manager
Ribby Hall Village
Steven Lonsdale
IT Manager
Ribby Hall Village
Take a look at some of the results that stood out for Ribby Hall.
Encouraged and facilitated easy collaboration
Ease of management for the internal IT team
Ensured user adoption of the new tools to benefit from the value added
Encouraged and facilitated easy collaboration
Whether you’re facing similar challenges to peers across your industry, or you have a unique need for something different – speak to us to find out what we can do.
