Following the smooth migration to Microsoft Office 365, Edmund Carr has continued to transform their business by working with Cloud Direct to migrate to Microsoft Azure. This flexible, secure environment now handles the firm’s key workloads in the cloud, including backup and their 24 business critical applications.

Key Benefits

• Less time managing IT, more time servicing clients
• Robust business continuity and security
• Scalability, flexibility, efficiency
• Employees can work remotely exactly as if they were in the office
• New business opportunities

Background

Edmund Carr used to buy, manage and replace traditional servers in-house. However, when the firm took their first step towards the cloud and moved to Office 365 with Cloud Direct, the effect on staff and the rest of the business was so positive, they decided they would move all their servers to the cloud using Microsoft Azure.

The challenge

Although using Office 365 freed up a considerable amount of time for the business as they no longer had to manage the email server, they found they were still spending too much time managing IT that would be better spent servicing clients.

Edmund Carr want to make sure their business is secure and always available. Clients rely on them for extremely timely services such as payroll, so they need to be confident that they can service clients securely and without risking downtime.

The solution

Microsoft Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

In 2017, Cloud Direct moved Edmund Carr’s servers to the Microsoft Azure environment run through Citrix. It now handles the firm’s essential workloads such as backup, disaster recovery and all 24 applications used by Edmund Carr employees. Built-in security and integrated tools make their applications faster and available when they need them.

The results

Strong performance, high availability

“We’re very happy with the results. Performance, functionality and support are all very good. We had a quick, smooth turnaround onto the Azure platform and have had no issues with downtime.” – Stewart Martin, partner, Edmund Carr

Efficiency and one pay-as-you-go bill

Edmund Carr benefit from the ‘pay-as-you-go’ nature of cloud as they don’t need to pay for servers between 6pm and 7am when they aren’t using them. They simply pay monthly for what they use with a single, itemised, bill.

Less powerful desktops required

Now there’s no need for powerful hardware and desktops. The need for in-house servers, support and backup has also been replaced by ongoing servers in the cloud.

New business opportunities

Now that Edmund Carr is operating in the flexible, fast and secure Azure environment, they can start introducing more resources from outside the UK, broadening the firm’s business opportunities with improved, wider client services.

 “Azure gives us much more flexibility all round, with access in a secure cloud environment.” – Stewart Martin, partner, Edmund Carr

Future plans

Edmund Carr are working with Cloud Direct on a 2020 roadmap for 99% of their servers to be in the cloud. Ultimately, the firm wants to take advantage of the cloud to increase savings and efficiencies, while making sure they have a reliable and cost-effective disaster recovery plan.