Microsoft Office 365
Customer Solution Case Study
Fire-Safety Firm Expects to Reduce Costs by 36 percent with
Cloud-Based Solution
Overview
Country or Region: Germany
Industry: Professional Services
Customer Profile
hhpberlin provides fire-safety consulting for large construction
projects around the world. Headquartered in Berlin, Germany, it
employs 110 workers.
Business Situation
hhpberlin wanted to examine if cloud-based services would help
reduce long-term costs while supporting growth and employee
productivity.
Solution
The company decided to transition its services to the
cloud-based Microsoft Office 365 solution, including Exchange
Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online, and Office Professional
Plus.
Benefits
Avoid hardware and consulting costs
Reduce IT administration and deployment costs
Strengthen security and reliability
Improve flexibility and compliance of licensing
Avoid employee downtime
“We expect Office 365 to help reduce IT costs by 36 percent. As
one of the first in our industry to take advantage of hosted
services, we will have both a costs and a competitive
advantage.”
Stefan Truthän, Chief Information Officer, hhpberlin
hhpberlin is one of the largest fire-safety consultancies in the
world. The IT staff previously deployed Microsoft Office 2010 and
several 2010 Microsoft server applications to help employees
improve communication and collaboration. As the firm grew, it
wanted to see whether cloud-based services would help reduce costs
while supporting growth and employee productivity. hhpberlin joined
the Microsoft Office 365 Rapid Deployment Program to test Microsoft
Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Lync
Online. After a short pilot, it decided to obtain an Office 365
enterprise subscription license plan, which includes Microsoft
Office Professional Plus and enables it to use its on-premises
Microsoft server solutions in conjunction with cloud-based
services. With Office 365, the company expects to reduce IT costs
by 36 percent and improve reliability as it continues to grow.
Situation
hhpberlin provides fire consultancy services during the design,
building, and operations phases of projects that range from office
buildings to stadiums and airports. The company’s 110 employees are
spread across five office locations in Germany. Since hhpberlin was
founded in 2000, it has experienced steady growth and become a
market leader as one of the largest and most innovative fire-safety
consultancies in the world.
As a professional services firm, hhpberlin believes its people
and their knowledge are its primary assets. By deploying Microsoft
Office 2010, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft SharePoint
Server 2010, and Microsoft Lync Server 2010, the company’s IT staff
enabled the communication and collaboration solutions that
employees needed to serve global clients on complex projects. With
this Microsoft environment, the company used Microsoft SharePoint
Workspace 2010 to deliver what it called the Project Center
solution, which helped increase revenue from its inspectors by 10
to 25 percent by reducing how much time they spent documenting
projects. Stefan Truthän, Chief Information Officer at hhpberlin,
explains, “The Microsoft platform was critical to our ability to
share knowledge across experts, improve customer service, and
increase project execution.” As evidence of this productivity
boost, in the last year, hhpberlin revenues grew by €1 million
(U.S.$1,422,000) and project workloads increased by 50 percent.
[Click here to read more about how hhpberlin expects 10 Percent
Revenue Gain with Office 2010.]
hhpberlin reduced IT costs by standardizing on a Microsoft
environment, but it expects that administration costs and hardware
costs will continue to grow as the company expands. It wanted to
examine whether cloud-based services would help reduce long-term
costs and improve reliability of its infrastructure while
supporting growth and employee productivity. Because hhpberlin
operates a single data center, it was also interested in geographic
redundancy and backups of critical project data that a cloud-based
service could provide.
hhpberlin reached out to Microsoft to learn about Microsoft
Office 365, the next-generation communications and collaboration
cloud-based services from Microsoft. Office 365 combines the
familiar Office desktop suite with cloud-based versions of
Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, and
Microsoft Lync Online. Truthän says, “Office 365 appeared to be the
only hosted services solution that would allow us to transition
services to the cloud at our own pace, while still taking advantage
of all the great capabilities in Office 2010 and Microsoft server
solutions that we already have in production.”
Solution
hhpberlin joined the Microsoft Office 365 Rapid Deployment
Program (RDP) to test the cloud-based solutions. The hhpberlin IT
staff easily moved 20 percent of its employees to online services
through the Office 365 portal. The pilot team tested all of the
Office 365 services, which include Exchange Online, SharePoint
Online, Lync Online, and Microsoft Office Professional Plus. “We
switched employees from on-premises servers to Office 365 services
in a few clicks, with no downtime for our employees. They required
no additional training to get started since they are already
familiar with Office, SharePoint, Exchange, and Lync. We also did
not need any new hardware or consulting to help with deployment or
backup and disaster recovery procedures,” says Truthän.
First, the company asked the pilot team to test key business
processes in Office 365 that they perform daily through their
current on-premises Microsoft solutions. The pilot team tested the
following communication and collaboration scenarios:
· Performing project execution and knowledge sharing with
Microsoft OneNote 2010 team notebooks stored in SharePoint
Online
· Accessing offline SharePoint Online content in Microsoft
SharePoint Workspace 2010 for mobile productivity of its onsite
inspectors
· Responding faster to customers by using email and calendar
capabilities such as Conversation View, Calendar Preview, and Voice
Mail-to-Text Preview through Exchange Online, Microsoft Outlook
2010, Microsoft Outlook Web Apps, and Microsoft Outlook Mobile from
their Windows Phone 7 devices
· Connecting to coworkers through Microsoft Lync 2010 and Lync
Online and testing capabilities such as presence and instant
messaging, PC-to-PC calling, and conferencing
Truthän says, “Most of our business processes are enabled by
Office 2010 as the primary employee interface to Exchange,
SharePoint and Lync capabilities. With Office 365, the employee
experience does not change. It just happens to be hosted by
Microsoft, which relieves the administrative burden and hardware
dependencies. Even if our Internet connection goes down for a few
hours, the risk is low to our business, because we still have
offline access to our SharePoint files in SharePoint Workspace and
offline access to our email and calendar in Outlook.”
After the company completed the pilot project, the IT staff
concluded that Office 365 would meet its long-term needs. The
company will transition its applicable Microsoft licenses from
traditional volume licenses to an Office 365 subscription service
plan that includes Office Professional Plus on the desktop. This
licensing arrangement provides the flexibility for hhpberlin to
transition to cloud-based solutions on its own schedule because it
provides licensing rights for on-premises solutions, which includes
its Lync Server enterprise voice deployment.
To begin the transition, hhpberlin will move the pilot mailboxes
permanently to Exchange Online, followed by the rest of the
employee mailboxes. To maintain the benefits hhpberlin receives
from its on-premises SharePoint Server and Lync Server deployments
in conjunction with its cloud-based services, the IT staff deployed
Active Directory Federation Services to manage the identification
of users across the servers and services. Truthän says, “The user
experience is seamless when employees are working with Exchange
Online in conjunction with on-premises solutions like SharePoint
Server and Lync Server. Employees do not know whether they are in
the cloud or not; and they don’t care, as long as it works.”
Employees can still view presence information in email messages and
can access the rich contact card to initiate a chat or phone
call.
Benefits
hhpberlin trusts Microsoft as its partner to host critical
communication and collaboration services in the cloud. The company
expects the Office 365 hosted solution, which includes the
subscription for Office Professional Plus, to help it control IT
costs as the company continues to grow. Truthän says, “We expect
Office 365 to help reduce IT costs by 36 percent. As one of the
first in our industry to take advantage of hosted services, we will
have a competitive advantage from both a cost perspective and due
to the advanced collaboration capabilities.” In his analysis,
Truthän included cost estimates for hardware, software,
administration, and deployment related to its communication and
collaboration platform over the next six years.
Avoid Hardware and Consulting Costs
By moving to Office 365, hhpberlin expects to avoid hardware and
consulting costs. For example, it spent approximately €100,000
[U.S.$141,000] in the last two years on hardware to support its
deployment of SharePoint Server, Exchange Server, and Lync Server.
As the company transitions from on-premises to Office 365, it will
avoid hardware costs for future deployments. Truthän says, “As we
move to Office 365, our existing servers will not be retired. The
hardware will be repurposed to our high-performance computing
environment, which we need for fire-safety engineers to perform
complex calculations on building designs.”
Reduce IT Administration and Deployment Costs
With the company’s recent growth, the amount of time IT staff
spent on administrative tasks supporting the desktop and server
environments had increased to approximately 70 percent of their
day. With the majority of these administrative responsibilities
moving to the hosted data center resources at Microsoft, the IT
staff at hhpberlin expects to have 50 percent more time to support
business-focused projects that help the company continue its
revenue growth. This time savings equates to at least one full-time
employee or €56,000 [U.S.$79,000] in yearly operation costs.
Truthän says, “Office 365 will help us maintain our current IT
staff level while our employee base, office locations, and
customers increase. The IT staff does not fear this change; they
embrace it because it will create opportunities for them to spend
more time supporting employees and leading business-focused IT
projects.”
Figure 1. Cost Comparison Chart – Annual Costs
For example, after hhpberlin moves all services online, when a
new employee joins the company, the IT administrator will create a
new directory account in Active Directory. Then, with one
additional click, the employee will be connected to Office 365. All
the other activities, including security, uptime, backup, and
disaster recovery, will be managed and maintained by Microsoft at
the data center. “This will free up time for my IT staff to focus
on hhpberlin business activities, not server administration,” says
Truthän.
hhpberlin will also significantly decrease vendor costs from
consulting fees to help deploy, upgrade, and update software for
its on-premises applications. Truthän says, “Since the experts at
Microsoft will handle most of our daily maintenance for us in the
hosted environment, hhpberlin expects a cost avoidance of €5,000 to
€40,000 [U.S.$7,110 to $56,875] per deployment project.”
Strengthen Security and Reliability
With Office 365, hhpberlin takes advantage of premium antispam
and antivirus protection, geo-redundant data centers, twenty-four
hour a day, seven days a week IT-level phone support, and a
financially backed, 99.9 percent uptime service level agreement.
Truthän adds, “We are confident Microsoft has the resources to
protect our data in the cloud and provide us with more robust
security and reliability than we can do ourselves.”
Improve Flexibility and Compliance of Licensing
hhpberlin gains more control of its IT with the flexibility and
management of the Office 365 subscription-based licensing model.
The pay-as-you-go monthly service enables the IT staff to easily
comply with its licenses by scaling the subscription as employees
are hired or leave the company. Truthän says, “Even though we are a
smaller company, we have faced challenges managing licenses in the
past. With Office 365, our license costs are more predictable and
scalable as we grow our business. The per-employee subscription
method is also easy to pay—similar to a monthly cell phone bill.
Plus our IT staff can better manage license compliance and ensure
we only pay for the capacity and services we need.”
As hhpberlin transitions its solutions to Office 365, the IT
staff can create more flexible deployment plans. Whether it
transitions employees to cloud services such as SharePoint Online
or Lync Online a few at a time or all at once, IT can choose to run
both hosted services and on-premises solutions. Truthän says, “With
Office 365, we will move to cloud services at our own pace. As we
transition employees and services, the IT staff can control our
infrastructure and run the business with the administrative
capabilities provided.”
This flexibility also allows hhpberlin to pay for licenses based
on employees’ job descriptions. For example, hhpberlin can provide
a college intern with a license for a less expensive plan that is
sufficient for the job. If the intern is hired full-time, the IT
staff can quickly move them to the same enterprise plan that the
rest of the company subscribes to with Office 365.
Avoid Employee Downtime
During the transition to Exchange Online, IT staff reported zero
support calls from employees related to communication downtime or
delays in project execution. Truthän says, “Since our employees see
the same Outlook 2010 interface, we experienced no lapses in email
communication. Keeping our employees productive and in touch with
our customers is critical to our revenue model and IT
strategy.”
hhpberlin trusts Microsoft to help lead the way to a
cost-effective cloud-based solution that will help its employees be
more productive. Truthän concludes, “We are confident in
Microsoft’s experience, resources, and skills to securely host our
critical communication and collaboration services. Our
participation in the Office 365 RDP program enabled us to be one of
the first to move to Office 365 in our industry. Since innovative
technology solutions are a strong selling point, we expect to gain
a competitive advantage in the marketplace as we transition to
Office 365.”
Microsoft Office 365
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call
the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In
Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877)
568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or
hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD)
services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and
Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access
information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information about hhpberlin products and services, call
(49) (30) 895955-0 or visit the website at: www.hhpberlin.de
Microsoft Office 365 brings together cloud versions of our most
trusted communications and collaboration products—Microsoft
SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online—with the latest
version of our Office desktop suite and companion web applications
for businesses of all sizes.
Office 365 helps save time and money, and it frees up valued
resources. Simple to use and easy to administer, it is financially
backed by a service level agreement guaranteeing 99 percent
reliability. Office 365 features robust security, IT-level phone
support, geo-redundancy, disaster recovery, and the business-class
privacy controls and standards that you expect from a world-class
service provider.
For more information about Microsoft Office 365, go to:
www.office365.com
