Cloud Migration: Albemarle Centre

Project Overview

• Project driver: avoid the expense of upgrading an on-site server and associated annual costs.
• Move Active Directory and organisation data to Microsoft 365.
• Improve the Centre’s security position.

Project Benefits

• More than 20% Annual cost saving.
• Improved data access and management with Sharepoint sites.
• Microsoft 365 platform features improve endpoint security.
• Offline backups of MS 365 for continuity and disaster recovery.

Organisation

The building that houses The Albemarle Centre began as a glove factory back in the 1800s before becoming a church in 1878. In 1982, the then abandoned building was restored and refurbished. The Centre is run by David Joslin and offers help to vulnerable people in developing skills and widening their social circle by providing a range of activities including cooking, gardening, exercise and IT.

Cloud Migration Challenge

Albemarle were hosting their Sage accounting and other IT systems on-site but the hardware was reaching the end of its warranty. They had already committed to migrating Sage to Xero Cloud and David was keen to move the remaining IT systems to the cloud to costly hardware support and make savings on their annual IT spend.

There had been a deliberate review of the Centre’s operational practices in reaction to a surge in cyber security threats emerging during the pandemic. Albemarle also undertook a comprehensive review of their cyber security position and sought guidance from Blueloop as its trusted IT partner.

Cloud Migration Solution

Internet Upgrade

The first task was upgrading the Centre’s internet connection. Increased bandwidth was required to support initial data migration and to ensure reliable operations once the on-site IT systems were fully migrated.

Implement Microsoft 365 Platform Security Features

Upgrading Albemarle’s mix of Microsoft 365 (MS 365) licences to the Business Premium Non-profit tier unlocked a range of platform security features that would really improve the organisation’s security position. This was vital to support a move to the cloud, where IT systems are accessed over the public internet.

• Entra ID with Multi Factor Authentication to protect user login, with conditional access to reduce the burden of MFA prompts for on-site users.
• Microsoft Intune to manage user PCs and mobile phones, replacing Group Policy and on-site Active Directory controls.
• Microsoft Defender for Business for antimalware and endpoint threat detection.
• Bitlocker for data encryption on laptop and desktop PCs.

Blueloop added a hybrid join from the on-site Windows domain to sync local Active Directory user accounts to MS 365 Entra ID, during the migration phase.

It is important to keep control and visibility of IT assets to ensure they are up to date, protected, and running standard software and configurations. Microsoft Intune gives the Centre clear visibility and policy management for all their devices from a single dashboard.

Data Migration and Backup

The Centre was using Microsoft Teams and a data loss risk had already been identified. No backups were being taken of data in MS 365.

While preparing to move their files and data to Sharepoint, the Centre took the opportunity to do some housekeeping and data management. Blueloop helped them to design a new architecture for storing their data and files using multiple Sharepoint sites. Each site would host files and divide the organisation’s data storage into logical areas with appropriate access controls applied.

The fact that Microsoft does not hold backups of users MS 365 data is often missed by customers. Albemarle opted into Blueloop’s MS 365 backup service, which copies files and data contained in Sharepoint, Teams, Email, etc. to a safe location outside of Microsoft’s cloud.