The Customer
The Woodland Trust is the UK’s largest woodland conservation charity. It has 500,000 members and supporters and more than 1,000 woodlands of its own. Its head office is in Grantham, Lincolnshire, with regional offices in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, and a network of volunteers all over the UK.
The mission of the Trust is to create havens for wildlife by planting millions of trees every year, campaign for new laws to protect ancient woodland and restore damaged ancient woods so they can breathe again.
The Business Challenges
The Woodland Trust has a huge and remotely spread network of employees, volunteers, and members. They came to Transpute, one of London’s leading IT service providers, with an ambitious requirement to transform their ICT network in the light of multiple operating inefficiencies that were hampering their mission.
The Woodland Trust issued a wide-ranging tender for an IT co-support partner to manage their entire ICT infrastructure, including the supply and configuration of upgraded new end-user devices and network security. They needed a partner to successfully deliver better collaboration and communications technology to support a new agile way of working for the organisation.
What Transputec Did
The Woodland Trust had made a strategic decision to migrate from the current on-premise Exchange 2016 to Exchange Online (Microsoft 365). The existing physical Exchange 2016 was sited at the offices at Grantham and had been subject to a recent incident resulting in it being taken temporarily off-line.
A decision was made by the Woodland Trust, at the recommendation of Transputec, to use the existing Microsoft 365 tenant that had not been fully utilised previously. The Exchange 2016 on-prem was brought back into service and configured for a hybrid migration approach as this configuration had already been replicated to the tenant and Azure AD. The Transputec Recovery Team then worked alongside the Woodland Trust’s IT Team to fully implement Exchange Online (M365).
“Migrating to Exchange Online has supported the Woodland Trust on its cloud migration journey, simplifying our infrastructure and removing the risks associated with running older versions of Exchange on prem. We now have a consistent and reliable email experience for all staff in the organisation, and a platform which is extensive for the future.”
Kathryn Downs, Chief Information Officer, The Woodland Trust
“The benefits of the migration online include 99% guaranteed uptime, predictable costs, always having the latest updates, the ability to scale at speed, Microsoft 365 functionality and the security of multifactor authentication.”
Stuart Salt, Director of Services, Transputec
Navigate
- Undertook audit of existing customer OS and data storage
- Explored options for new OS and data migration
- Recommended hybrid migration approach from on-prem to online
- Developed prioritised plan for consolidation and risk management
- Produced pilot testing, validation and rollout plan
Innovate
- Configured Hybrid Exchange
- Testing between Exchange Online and Exchange on-prem using load balancers
- Accelerated mailbox migration over holiday period to mitigate lack of MFA
Integrate
- Implemented Exchange Online migration and deployment
- Managed hybrid email migration
- Conducted testing and validation
- Provided training for superusers
- Provided documentation for user adoption and handover
- Enabled MFA
- Ensured project implementation met customer critical deadlines
Evolve
- Cloud hosting of the OS supports a new way of working for the IT team
- No server needed and predictable costs
- OS always has the latest updates
- 99% guaranteed uptime
- The ability to scale at speed
- Security via multi-factor authentication
- Improves the ability of the organisation to achieve its core goals
Relationship with Transputec
“Our approach at Transputec is to build a strong relationship with the customer, based on excellent communications. So that when an issue does occur we can identify and solve it immediately. Our aim is always to exceed their expectations. The first two stages of the Woodland Trust project have been completed on time and within budget, at the same time as meeting quality targets and maintain high levels of customer satisfaction.”
Stuart Salt
Director of Services, Transputec
