As a company that manages a suite of diverse businesses, the Tilly Group thrives off email.
Its major subsidiary, Tilly Pressure Test, ensures companies in the oil field services and other industries use certified, tested and durable materials in the field by pressure testing the iron resources they use. To turn around projects quickly and efficiently, instant mobile communication in the field is critical.
While working on the standard protocol POP3 for email and scheduling, mobile communication was far from easy. With POP3, the team had to manually set up mobile integration, features and programs and constantly input their email and passwords, which ate up valuable time. The company was also burdened by costly downtime. Because the Tilly Group’s email server would go down 3-4 times a year — and sometimes for up to 2 days at a time — productivity and the company’s bottom line also suffered.
IT Director David Solomon knew the company needed the enterprise-grade email and calendar capabilities of Microsoft Exchange to maximize productivity and improve mobile communication.
Investing in the Future: Migrating to Exchange Online With Agile IT
Hosting an Exchange Server would sharply decrease costly downtime and solve many of the problems the company faced with POP3. David also sought the customer service, support, features and backside management of Microsoft over the more restrictive POP3 server.
The Tilly Group’s 140 users had simply outgrown POP3. To migrate to Exchange Online, David needed to find an experienced third-party migration specialist to take on the project, so he began contacting a handful of Microsoft Partners. Unfortunately, he felt none of the vendors were excited to lead the project until reaching out to the Agile IT team — who was persistent and handled the account in a professional and organized manner.
“On [Agile IT’s] side, everything went pretty much perfectly,” David said. “Everything they promised to do, they did.”
Working with Agile IT and leveraging the advanced AgileAscend migration solutions, the Tilly Group successfully migrated their email and calendar data from POP3 to Exchange Online. Agile IT also configured Active Directory Sync with Office 365 for Identity to enable single sign-on in the field.
With the help of Agile IT, the Tilley Group was able to:
- Migrate to a modern email platform with security and spam filtering built into the product.
- Streamline and consolidate all email and scheduling into a single secure solution.
- Improve collaboration through shared calendaring and other Exchange features.
- Complete the migration to Exchange Online with minimal impact to business.
Leveraging Ongoing Support & Reliability of Exchange Online
With Exchange Online fully deployed, the Tilly Group team continues to enjoy the add-ins such as text alerts, voicemail alerts and simple setup and use for mobile. They’ve also created groups for departments and composite distribution and contact lists to further improve collaboration.
The mobile integration with Android, iOS and Blackberry has been a lifesaver for the team. With single sign-on configured, employees can quickly access their emails and calendars in the field. Although the company is only using the email module, shared calendars and shared contact groups at the moment, it’s nice to have other features like OneDrive and SharePoint in their back pocket, David said.
From an administrator’s perspective, David also loves the built-in security features such as antimalware, phishing and data loss prevention along with the overall appearance, customization and depth of Exchange Online.
“On the surface, it’s nice to look at,” David said. “But once you start digging, there’s a lot there to learn. Anything I ever needed is in Exchange Online or can be there through an add-in.”
Post-migration, David is also taking advantage of Agile IT’s free 60-day support and has been able to bring up user issues and quickly get answers from the Agile IT team.
In the long run, the nearly 100% uptime and quick conflict resolution will be the biggest benefit to the Tilly Group. Armed with an email solution that facilitates collaboration, seamless mobile communication and reliable IT support, the Tilly Group will save thousands in continued productivity and uptime.
As proven Exchange server consultants with experience migrating to Exchange 2013 & 2016 from all the common messaging systems, Agile IT can help achieve your business and IT goals. If you’re in need of a proven partner to lead your Exchange or Office 365 migration, contact Agile IT today!
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