Office 365 Gives Market Research Consulting Giant Room to Maneuver

TrendSource is a market research consulting firm located here in San Diego, CA. Most of their clients are Fortune 100 companies, for whom they gather data by sending agents out into the field and bringing it back to be analyzed. Agile IT recently sat down with TrendSource CTO Chris Burtch to talk about their experience migrating from Exchange on-premises to Office 365.

When TrendSource was founded 25 years ago, they didn’t have the complex Exchange environment they have today, as their IT department manages several hundred websites. TrendSource has been steadily growing, with now over 100 employees, and is finding it difficult to ensure that their technology keeps up with the demands of their business. Burtch says that it was increasingly hard to maintain adequate server space. He needed to migrate out of his current environment and all of the “administrative nightmares” that came with it.

Burtch says he looked at a few different options before deciding on Office 365. Says Burtch, “Office 365 was a more all-encompassing solution for us”. As an ISO (International Organization for Standardization) certified company, TrendSource must maintain PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) compliance. With Microsoft’s high commitment to security and regulatory compliance, Burtch felt that he could “keep track of licensing and keep it more compliant than [he] could any other way”.

Moving to Office 365 has not only consolidated licensing for many of the applications TrendSource uses, it has allowed them to do away with some altogether. They have been using the web service GoToMeeting for their conference calls, and spending hundreds of dollars every month for that service. Because of Lync, they were able to eliminate the need for GoToMeeting altogether, and greatly enjoy the simplicity of using Lync for both instant messaging and conference calling.

Burtch is also enjoying the security of knowing that his information is protected, and that he no longer needs to worry about manually backing up his system or plan for catastrophe. “You can access everything you need,” says Burtch. “It doesn’t matter where you are or what’s going on at the building. The building could be underwater and you’d still get your email.”

When asked how he felt about his Microsoft Partner of choice, Burtch had this to say of Agile IT: “Agile IT had the knowledge and the experience. They’ve done so many migrations, I trusted them to already know all the pitfalls, and things to avoid, and how to do it correctly. The money we spent on Agile IT’s help is far less than it would have cost us in downtime, or productivity on my part.”

For more information on TrendSource, visit their website here.