Office 365 Migration Gives City Workers More Storage, Access & Features

Company: City of Michigan City
Industry: Government
Employees: 440
Overview: Under a state-mandated requirement to retain all emails and data for seven years, the city began to run out of space on its existing server. The city needed a solution with greater storage and accessibility for mobile users.
Solution: Office 365 migration

The City of Michigan City, in the state of Indiana, has a staff of 440 employees who represent the city’s 31,000 residents. With a state-mandated requirement to retain all of its emails and data for seven years, the city began to run out of space on its existing server, so it tapped Agile IT to help transition to Microsoft Office 365. The new system enabled the city’s workers to archive emails and documents, stay connected and be more productive.

With 275 of its 440-person staff using email on a daily basis and a state-mandated retention policy requiring it to archive seven years worth of emails and documents, the City of Michigan City was running out of space on its existing Exchange server. “Retaining that much information for that period of time on a limited budget was a challenge,” said Andrew Matanic, the city’s IT director. “It was either continue with an on-premise solution and deal with having to manage that server, the storage, backups and spam filtering, or look to a Cloud solution.”

Not only did the city need more storage, it also needed a solution that provided its mobile users with more accessibility. With more than half of the city’s staff mobile – including police officers and firefighters – as well as the city’s sanitary district relying on a web-based work order system, it was vital to find a solution that could be available almost anywhere, any time. “Because of how dependent our users are on email, migrating was something I was dreading for a couple years,” said Matanic. “I thought it was going to be a very challenging task to ensure they had the least disruption possible.”

When looking for a technology partner to handle the migration to Office 365, the City of Michigan City wanted to find a Gold Microsoft partner company who had significant experience, positive reviews and high customer satisfaction. It didn’t want to waste time and money due to a company’s lack of experience, nor did it want to be the guinea pig for someone just getting into the migration business. Agile IT fit the bill, being one of the first companies to migrate users to Microsoft Office 365 and recently being named the Microsoft West Region Cloud Partner of the Year.

Agile IT worked hand-in-hand with the city’s IT team to roll out the migration to the city’s users. With Microsoft Office 365, the City of Michigan City was soon able to give its users unlimited archiving and their own 50GB mailboxes.

Its IT team can now assist users via an easy-to-use web portal and identify potential technology issues by accessing a user-friendly dashboard. Through the process, the city was also able to update its users’ Microsoft Office software, standardizing everyone across the board. “It’s very useful to have everyone on the same platform,” said Matanic. “It alleviated a lot of the headaches we were experiencing.”

Since migrating to Office 365, the city’s IT team has found the system to be extremely reliable and hasn’t had any issues with downtime. Both time and manpower dealing with technology issues have been reduced, and there have been significant cost savings in not having to purchase additional hardware and equipment. The migration was the least painful out of all of the major upgrades the city has done to date.

“Office 365 solved so many problems at once – it was a turnkey solution for us that made the most sense for us,” said Matanic. “It’s been a great fit for our city, our needs and our users with its availability, its resiliency and its scalability.”

For more information about the City of Michigan City, visit eMichiganCity.com.