Digicall reduces e-mail migration time by 83.3% by choosing the best partner
Issued by JEC Technologies, written by Candice-Lee Reeves
Published on ITWeb , Johannesburg, 05 Oct 2022
Migrating a business’s e-mail systems to the cloud can increase agility, uptime, and security. These are some of the reasons Digicall South Africa decided to move its on-premises e-mail environment to a cloud-based solution.
Anticipating an extended migration time, Digicall turned to JEC Technologies, an IT-managed service provider and Microsoft 365 specialist, to help speed up the process. And they did. By selecting the right partner, Digicall saved up to 20 months of potential migration time. Here is the case study…
The challenge Digicall is a multinational group company specializing in business process management (BPM) services. As part of the local office’s migration plan, the company created new e-mail addresses in the cloud for each of its 316 users. When users started using these new mailboxes, they temporarily had:
1. The original on-premises mailbox, with its full e-mail history; and 2. Their new, primary, cloud mailbox with a new e-mail address. For the migration to be finalized, the e-mail history from the 316 on-premises e-mail mailboxes needed to be moved to the new, cloud mailboxes with the new e-mail addresses. Digicall’s IT team could manually export these, but the process was labor-intensive, required users to be on-site and offline during that time, and the projected timeline using this method was an estimated 20 months. With two e-mail licenses and mailboxes to maintain for each user, an extended migration like this could have rippled into other business operations. This was not an option for Digicall. They needed a much faster solution that would consolidate data, minimize effort, reduce costs and limit user impact.
The Solution It was at this point when Digicall contacted JEC Technologies Pty Ltd (aka JEC Tech), an IT consulting firm, managed IT service provider, Microsoft Gold Partner, and Direct MS Cloud Solutions Provider. Being an expert in Microsoft’s cloud solutions, JEC Tech was able to use its analysis of Digicall’s processes to create an automation script that leveraged existing tools and applications to optimize the speed and efficiency of Digicall’s migration. By leveraging cloud technology and automation, the script pulled data from the original, on-premises mailboxes, uploaded it into a secure Azure Cloud storage space, consolidated the mailboxes, ensured no mail was lost or compromised, and facilitated the automated license change – all without impacting the user until the very end. At this point, a Digicall IT person only needed to phone the user to guide them on how to remove the on-premises mailbox connections in Outlook and ensure the user’s needs were met. Johan Kriel, CIO at Digicall, adds: “Working smarter, not harder, has always been key to Digicall’s success. We make use of technology to create value; the value is, however, not in the technology exclusively, but in our people and partners that create unique solutions using various technologies.”
The impact JEC Tech’s custom, cloud-based solution enabled Digicall to migrate 316 of its employees’ mailboxes in four months – 16.6% of the projected timeline. This saved Digicall time, and potential license fees, reduced IT efforts, and prevented any other knock-on costs that could have come from a longer migration time. Need an IT partner that can save you time and costs migrating to the cloud? Contact JEC Technologies Pty Ltd to see how we can help.
When an organization doesn’t have the internal IT capabilities or capacity to handle these activities, working with a knowledgeable provider can ensure a successful outcome
Considering Migrating to the Cloud? What strategies will you use to get to the cloud?
0%Re-hosting: Existing application, moving it to the cloud
0%Re-platforming: Existing applications to cloud and modernize
0%Repurchasing: Business fit of an existing technology