Olikka did more than just keep the migration on track. They also taught Joval’s IT team how to handle its new cloud environment. “We needed to upskill our internal team so we didn’t have to outsource the entire migration,” recounts Stoneham. “I was really looking to build some capability internally, and Olikka was more than willing to help. They guided us through the first few workloads, then set us up so we could do the remainder ourselves.”
“Olikka is a big believer in teaching our customers how to manage their own cloud environments wherever possible,” adds Kristijan Damjanoski, Technical Consultant at Olikka. “We don’t just do ‘lift and shift’ migrations like so many other firms, we actually held workshops with Joval to walk them through Microsoft best practices for the cloud, as well how to execute the migration and maintain their new environment. We helped them migrate the first five or ten apps, then the Joval team handled the rest—it was pretty awesome.”
Enhancing collaboration with Microsoft Teams
As part of Joval’s cloud migration, Olikka helped them implement Microsoft Teams to enhance collaboration. “It’s been a bit of a game-changer for us,” notes Stoneham. “Like all businesses in Australia, the first outbreak of COVID-19 forced us to shift to a work from home model within a few days. Our people got comfortable using Teams very quickly, it’s quite intuitive, and it’s had some sizable business impacts. Historically, our business relied heavily on phone calls and conference bridges, but now, everyone is using Teams and is collaborating much better. It’s become our default tool, and it’s been incredibly well received. Now, we have our New Zealand winemakers joining meetings to provide our Melbourne team with live video updates of the current harvest, from the vineyard.”
Like all of us, employees can sometimes be slow to embrace change and new tools. However, thanks to Joval’s culture of innovation, paired with the pressing need to enable remote work and collaboration, Joval has seen rapid employee adoption of Microsoft Teams. “Microsoft Teams has been invaluable. After COVID-19 hit, we were able to smash through all those traditional change management barriers and get the entire group using Teams for productive collaboration within a few days. This has made the working from home model far more effective than we could have imagined.” Stoneham explains further, “We are taking maximum advantage of this wave of adoption to unlock the full capability of Teams. With basic collaboration embedded, we are now in the process of replacing our file servers, PABX, and contact center with Teams-based solutions. Cost and collaboration benefits aside, this approach enables our people to perform most of their daily tasks in a single user interface that works on any device.”
Securing Joval’s cloud environment
Following the cloud migration, Olikka helped Joval conduct a deep security audit of its new cloud environment. “We worked with Joval to go through everything from network security groups to which ports had to be open,” recounts Damjanoski. “We operate on the best practice of ‘block everything, only poke holes where required’. We also introduced other Microsoft security tools such as Azure Bastion and Azure Security Center to ensure Joval employees only have access to what they need to do their jobs.”
To further reduce business risk, Joval also engaged Olikka to implement a disaster recovery solution. “The goal was to ensure that even if there was a cloud outage at one of our locations, our key business services would be able to reroute through another location and stay online” explains Stoneham. “With Joval 100 percent in the cloud, everything needs to be covered for their business,” adds Rheann Baker, Account Manager at Olikka. “It’s quite literally where everything is being held, and they don’t have that on-premises fallback anymore, so this disaster recovery solution was essential.”
“Cybersecurity is one of the things that kept me up at night,” adds Stoneham. “Having Olikka conduct a full security assessment and seeing the built-in security of Microsoft Azure, I feel more confident that we’re prepared for anything.”