A traditional regional on-premise IT set-up was beginning to hold back RSM’s critical internal systems development for their 41,000 strong workforce. Moving their test environment into Azure dramatically decreased their application deployment time and opened the business up to further cloud opportunities. 

Background

RSM is a global advisory firm which helps clients manage risk, improve productivity and realise value. Its global executive office is responsible for their applications platform which connects and supports its 90 member firms across 116 countries.

Challenges

Before deploying a global cloud strategy, RSM’s UK based IT team managed their on-premise test infrastructure, which they relied heavily on to develop and launch their business-critical systems and applications. Although only needed periodically these servers were always on draining valuable business resources in cost and maintenance.

“Testing on servers was becoming increasingly onerous. We wanted to have the capacity to do the testing when we needed it, for it to be flexible and for us to pay for what we needed,” says Sanjay Sood from the RSM Global Executive Office.

For RSM to continue to support and optimise the business-critical systems their global network use daily they needed to consolidate their costly on-premise architecture and develop a more agile development platform.

Solution

Cloud Direct helped RSM realise the cost efficiency of consolidating their global on-prem application infrastructure, whilst also benefiting from the increased security and scalability of an Azure environment.

To prove the efficiency of a public cloud strategy to the wider business, Cloud Direct began RSM’s migration with their “onerous” testing servers; implementing a global SharePoint test environment in Azure including Resource Groups.

Flexible but secure global testing environment

RSM’s new agile cloud-based test environment allows them to rapidly DevTest and launch new services and applications across their network faster than ever before. Their new SharePoint test environment enables collaboration across RSM’s 750 offices around the world alongside secure data sovereignty.

Pay-as-you-go

By leveraging the pay-as-you-go structure of Azure, Sanjay and his team have a truly flexible reliable platform for DevTest. They can scale up machines when they need them, then ‘switch them off’ when they’ve completed their tests and only pay for what they use.

Increased business buy-in to public cloud strategy

Successfully launching their test environment with Cloud Direct in under three months has given RSM confidence in the public cloud. Proving the speed and efficiency of a cloud deployment has laid the foundations for business buy-in to increased Azure adoption.

“Like many businesses, there is a lot more opportunity for us to increase the use of cloud IT. Knowing that we can deliver a project like this successfully gives us the right kind of foothold to do more in the future,” says Sanjay.

Partnership

RSM is a long-standing customer of Cloud Direct’s Malta-based development arm and we have helped launch multiple successful business applications with them. RSM, therefore, saw us as the natural choice for their strategic cloud partner as they sought to develop their global cloud strategy. They needed a long-term partner who could meet their business requirements today and continue to support the growing development of their cloud adoption. 

“We knew we wanted to work in Azure, but we needed an expert partner who could explain the options available to us and help us develop our global cloud strategy,” says Sanjay.

“Rather than simply focusing on the technology, Cloud Direct’s specialist engineers listened to our business needs before exploring the different solutions that could work for us.”

The results

Successfully implementing a global SharePoint environment in Azure has allowed RSM to rapidly DevTest and launch business-critical applications to their global network at an unprecedented rate.

“Moving to Azure has enabled us to improve the support we give the business by speeding up the testing phase of all our projects,” says Sanjay.

“We are now able to spin up the resources necessary for multiple applications developments to be tested at the same time.”

The IT team no longer need to deal with maintenance or upgrades of their on-prem test servers. Allowing them to focus on proactive business led tasks to drive greater efficiency across the business.

RSM’s new Azure-based testing environment also serves as a proof of concept to the wider business to expand their public cloud adoption. This is just the first step on their cloud journey.