Acht Grad Ost leaves the data centre behind.

Customer profile

Acht Grad Ost AG offers a comprehensive service package in the field of municipal infrastructure. It operates as a broad-based engineering and surveying company throughout Switzerland. The company focuses on forward-looking and fact-based decision-making and can optimally support its customers with its combined activities.

Establishing an innovative cloud solution

Acht Grad Ost AG had previously purchased its IT infrastructure from Geocloud. In addition, some of the solutions and hardware used were outdated. The previous IT infrastructure had to be detached from Geocloud and the services had to be rebuilt. Since the contract with Geocloud was terminated at the end of 2021, the project had to be implemented quickly and without affecting ongoing operations.

Jürg Lüthy, Deputy Managing Director, is very satisfied with the cloud solution and the Operation Care operating model: "The new solution has simplified and improved collaboration between the teams and with external partners. We really appreciate the location-independent access to our applications and data. Thanks to Baggenstos' operation of the solution, we can fully focus on our business."

Facts and Figures

Initial situation and objective

The Acht Grad Ost Group needed to implement a new IT infrastructure. The existing IT infrastructure was previously sourced from Geocloud. The contract with Geocloud was terminated at the end of 2021. In part, the previous solutions and the hardware used were also outdated. In addition to replacing the old IT infrastructure from Geocloud and setting up new, secure and future-proof services, these goals had to be implemented.

• Migration ICT From supplier Geocloud to Azure, O365 (Cloud only Infra.)

• Common O365 Tenant for SBU, DATAVER, AGO (Tenant-to-Tenant Migrations)

• Consolidation of the ICT from SBU, DATAVER and AGO -> new Azure Tenant, central for all

• Establishment of a new network for the Acht Grad Ost locations and a redundant connection to the Microsoft Cloud

• Renewal of all network components (Wlan HPE Aruba, FW Fortinet, Switches HPE)

• Introduction AVD (suitable for CAD applications

• Central client management for the complete Acht Grad Ost Gruppe (AGO, SBU, DATAVER)

• Security focus: Secure login with MFA, new password policy, Security baseline Baggenstos, Secure Score

Solutions

The operation of all servers was moved to the Azure Cloud. With the Azure File Service, all data for CAD and project data is now stored in the cloud. File servers are thus no longer necessary. With Teams (data in SharePoint, chat, online calls, meetings), all employees, whether in the home office or on site, can communicate and complete tasks at any time, regardless of location and across the group.

Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) is used for CAD applications with high GPU requirements in the shared workplace.

The solution is operated as part of our Managed Service Operation Care following a six-month transition phase. For this purpose, Intune managed clients were connected and a new network concept with connection of the other locations with Azure VPN was implemented.

Key figures

10 locations for Acht Grad Ost, SBU and DATAVER

150 clients and approx. 120 users

10 servers in Azure, 7 AVD session hosts

Results

With the use of Azure VPN, Azure File Service and Teams, working in a home office is no longer a problem for the Acht Grad Ost Group. The CAD applications are available everywhere with the help of AVD. Microsoft 365 serves as the platform for group-wide communication. There is no longer any need for on-premises servers. This saves costs, availability is better, and the solution scales as needed.

Running the solution as an Operation Care Managed Service ensures that the infrastructure is always up to date and daily support is provided by a professional team. In addition, the Baggenstos Service Manager responsible for the Acht Grad Ost Group ensures clear interfaces, is the point of contact for escalations and drives the further development of the platform.

Challenges

The biggest challenge was the time pressure, because the contract with the provider Geocloud was terminated as of December 2021. In addition, suitable solutions for CAD applications with high performance had to be found and implemented. In addition, there were tenant-to-tenant migrations with new domains and platforms.

A big bang migration was out of the question, as operations had to continue without interruption. The high data volume had to be migrated to the new solution.

Many thanks for the good cooperation

We would like to express our sincere thanks to all those involved in the project for their excellent cooperation. We are pleased to be able to contribute to the continued success of the Acht Grad Ost Group with the new Microsoft cloud infrastructure and our Managed Service Operation Care.