IT technology and solutions delivery firm unifies collaboration in the Cloud and reduces IT costs to redefine work environment By Pupul Dutta
GAVS Technologies, a leading player in the global IT services and solutions delivery market, had very limited access to unified communication and there was also a lack of collaboration platform for sharing documents within the company. Moreover, the previous versions of server platforms stood as a major road-block in the path to bolster productivity, information-sharing and reduction of IT costs. Hence, to keep up with the rapid growth of its businesses and cater to the increasing demand from employees for communication access virtually anytime, anywhere. The company sought a Cloud solution that would enable it to migrate to the Cloud on its own terms. GAVS, after careful evaluation between open source and Google Apps, chose Microsoft Office 365 as the one stop solution to all its problems.
Post the deployment, about 700 users of GAVS are now using Office 365, and the company is planning for a more extensive migration by increasing the number of users over the time. “One of the key reasons for choosing Office 365 over Google Apps is the value that it brings in, which is not about the number of features but it’s about 24×7 expert phone support, native integration between solutions, enterprise class reliability and the familiar Office user interface,” said Sumit Ganguli, President, GAVS Technologies.
Solution served
Office 365 helped GAVS Technologies to increase productivity and reduce IT costs to redefine work environment considerably. With the implementation of Office 365, GAVS experienced a boost in productivity through higher familiarity and usability without any need of training the users for the solution. Secondly, employees’ need for a single, unified and robust platform for email and instant messaging was met through this platform, thereby increasing the efficiency. Virtual access, provided anytime, anywhere, and on almost any device, met the increased demand for speedier and tighter collaboration across geographies and lowered the total cost of ownership together with yielding high cost benefit ratios.
Talking about the benefits of Office 365 over Google Apps, Ram Kumar Pichai, General Manager, Microsoft Office Division, Microsoft India said, “Besides providing world class collaboration tools, Microsoft Office 365 also comes with enterprise-class security to businesses of all sizes. Privacy too is never an issue with the solution as it is backed with a 99.9% uptime and a financially-backed Service Level Agreement.”
The Microsoft solution is also very easy to implement and manage as it comes ‘ready to use’ with 24x7x365 support from highly trained professionals. Further, Office 365 offers an affordable and pay-as-you-go pricing model.
Migration to Cloud
Organisations today are looking for a choice of moving to a private, public or a hybrid Cloud environment that not only minimises the cost of ownership, but also manages the increasing application workloads. Businesses today are looking for the ability to gain access from almost anywhere, including mail service, calls, chat and collaboration.
GAVS too wanted to deploy a solution that would help it migrate to Cloud on its own terms and not bind it by some technical or written agreement. It was hence, easier for the company to opt for Microsoft as it offers Cloud services across all three service layers, viz. infrastructure, platform and software as a service. With all of Microsoft’s key products having a Cloud offering, customers can choose any mix of a combination of on-premise and managed Cloud while adopting IT, and can keep evolving the mix as they move along. “Customers also have the flexibility to adopt and move between private and public Clouds seamlessly. Thus, Microsoft is bringing Cloud to its customers on their terms,” explained Pichai.
“We see hybrid Cloud adoption as the new trend in the Cloud computing space. With hybrid Cloud – a combination of private and public cloud environments – you can preserve the value of your investment in an on-premise environment, while it allows you to transition some workloads to the Cloud or embrace public Cloud fully for other workloads. We have also specifically designed a suite of Cloud solutions tailoured for SMBs, comprising of Windows Azure, Office 365, Windows Intune, and Dynamics CRM Online,” he added.
Racing ahead
GAVS did not face any challenges during implementation as it was taken care of by Microsoft’s partner Veeras Infotek, which demonstrated high level of excellence and innovation, according to the company.
A happy Ganguli noted, “Overall, we are very satisfied with the stable performance of Office 365 and have been exploring a more extensive deployment of the solution. We are leveraging productivity in the Cloud through Office 365 to achieve new levels of collaboration both internally and externally.”
For Microsoft, it has been a win-win situation throughout with customers adopting Office 365 enthusiastically. The service is being offered along with Airtel’s broadband services which provides a complete solution to customers for all their communications and collaboration needs. “We are seeing greater adoption of our collaboration suites versus the standalone products as customers increasingly recognise the value of the full solution. In India, we have seen increased customer adoption of Office 365 with clients like Visaka Industries, Unilog Content Solutions, ACME Tele Power Ltd., Adhunik Group, Dabur and Infinity Retail, to name a few,” said Pichai.
