Summary:-
Client: Axell Wireless
Sector: Wireless Coverage Solutions
Key Technologies: Azure, Office 365, Azure Databox
Services Provided: Strategic Consulting, Cloud Migration, Office 365 Migration, IT Support
Project Goals
Migrate failing Exchange environment to Office 365
Provide reliable platform for server infrastructure
Rationalise server estate across multiple operating systems
Deliver infrastructure to support new ERP solution
Facilitate migration of customer NOC to new location
Client Background
Axell Wireless deliver advanced wireless coverage and capacity delivery systems that produce innovative, cost-effective and robust solutions that address market requirements for improved connectivity, greater capacity and better user experience.
Their trusted products and managed services offerings provide a dynamic approach to delivering cellular and public safety communications within a variety of challenging environments including buildings, stadiums, transportation, and outdoor venues.
Customers include The Shard skyscraper, Dulles International Airport, Heathrow Terminal 5, landmark train tunnels across the globe and the underground transport metro systems in Berlin, Beijing, Doha and Singapore.
As a result of our sale from our parent company we had no IT team or management in-house. We were introduced to Carbon Cloud who very quickly proved to be knowledgeable, proactive and easy to work with.
They worked with my team to understand the existing landscape and worked within incredibly tight timescales to deliver a reliable, responsive support service and helped us migrate our systems from legacy infrastructure. The team at Carbon Cloud have worked around challenging circumstances to deliver a great result for Axell.
Gary Baker, CFO
Project Detail
Axell Wireless was acquired by an investment house and as part of this transaction had a fixed period of time to migrate all IT systems from the old parent company. This was made trickier by the ageing and often failing infrastructure in place. There were many different solutions in place and there was no over-arching strategy in place for IT.
With the requirement to move office locations and to support increased remote working during the pandemic, Axell were keen to reduce the significant server footprint they had running using an on-premises virtual platform and to provide ease of management and flexibility in the future.
Carbon Cloud was engaged to conduct a full audit of the existing systems and to make recommendations for improvements. This also required the delivery of prioritised systems to fix on-going outages that were being experienced by the business.
Our first task was to prioritise the work that was needed. It was clear that there was lots to be done, but it was agreed with Axell that the services causing the most pain points for users should be targetted first. We identified a failing Exchange 2013 server as a key risk and identified Microsoft 365 as a good solution.
Wayne Emerson – Carbon Cloud.
Carbon Cloud quickly completed an audit on the existing mailboxes and AD users. It became clear that the existing environment had little free space and there were many old mailboxes still live on the Exchange server. These were migrated to shared mailboxes in Exchange Online, as well as configuring Azure Active Directory and synchronising the two systems. The required mailboxes were migrated to Microsoft 365 and Axell Wireless was able to benefit from significantly improved system uptime.
Axell was regularly experiencing file server outages which were having a significant impact on their users’ ability to complete their job roles. Carbon Cloud recommended migrating all file and virtual servers to the Microsoft Azure Cloud to provide a resilient, flexible platform. The Azure Migrate appliance was deployed and Carbon Cloud designed a file solution using Azure Files and cloud tiering to provide quick access to data.
As the comms link at the existing Axell Wireless location was close to saturated, Carbon Cloud utilised the Azure Databox service to efficiently move data to the cloud platform.
Carbon Cloud then architected a full Azure solution for the circa 100 servers, including the provision of a platform for Axell’s Network Operations Centre monitoring solution, client VPN, and database servers. The rationalisation of servers delivered an easy-to-manage solution and reduced licensing costs.
Carbon’s friendly service desk team manages the complete environment and are able to resolve user issues in a responsive and efficient manner.
