Dyer & Butler

Dyer & Butler are a Civil Engineering services specialist with a focus on transport infrastructure, including airports, highways, rail and the Underground. Formed in 1979, they are now part of the M Group Services Transport Division.

Since inception, Dyer & Butler have embarked on a wide range of projects throughout England and Wales, operating both in the public and private sectors to deliver energy, public realm, marine, river, water and electrical services.

The challenge

Dyer & Butler have been a valued customer of Transparity for a number of years, with projects mostly spanning migration from legacy, on-premises systems to the Microsoft Cloud. More recently, Dyer & Butler’s parent company had made a couple of new acquisitions, with the need for Dyer & Butler to migrate users and systems onto their existing tenancy. This would create a more collaborative environment across the business whilst ensuring all divisions benefited from Microsoft’s robust security features.

Dyer & Butler were looking to continue their relationship with the Microsoft Cloud expert due to being very happy with the support received over the years. Additionally, Transparity’s experience and knowledge within the Microsoft stack aligned perfectly with Dyer & Butler’s vision for their future progression and evolution. 

The solution

In order to migrate the new acquisitions effectively, Dyer & Butler were looking for solutions that facilitated a centralised and collaborative work environment within the Cloud. Microsoft 365 including Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive presented the best solution to allow for Cloud-based working. The benefit of data syncing across platforms allowed for clear communication as well as efficient file sharing amongst teams.

Many organisations have recognised the need to enhance security when managing a remote workforce, as it is crucial to have a secure and trusted environment outside the office. In turn, Dyer & Butler also saw an opportunity to boost their security posture with the help of the Microsoft Gold Partner’s recommendations and security expertise. With its intelligent mobility management and security platform, Microsoft EMS (Enterprise Mobility + Security) presented the best solution in helping to protect and secure Dyer & Butler’s users whilst empowering them to work flexibly.

Microsoft Endpoint Manager and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) were implemented to help secure and manage all users and their devices without any disruption to existing processes and systems, whilst also adding a significant protective layer to the sign-in process through identity verification.

The outcome

Bringing the new acquisitions within Dyer & Butler’s Cloud environment provided a modern approach to managing their integration. Migration to the Microsoft Cloud removed VPN traffic to the same office location for emails/files, helping to eliminate any potential bottlenecks. Additionally, migrating Dyer & Butler’s existing tenant provided a single platform for collaborative working, making it easy for each organisation to work in harmony and be managed from one place.

Most importantly, the implementation of EMS, with particular focus on Microsoft Endpoint Manager and MFA helped each individual company consolidate its third-party application providers to the Microsoft platform, bringing enhanced security benefits. This move also reduced licensing and running costs as it has made it significantly easier to manage and oversee the three groups of users from within the same interface.

“Working with Transparity allows us at Dyer & Butler to improve our knowledge of the ever-changing technical environments we find ourselves supporting. It’s often easy for IT persons to take the approach “if it isn’t broken, why fix it?”, but there lies the challenge – how do we improve if we don’t know that we need to change our thinking? Transparity make these decisions easy for us to understand why they’re important to consider in the first place.

“We live in a world where multi-vectored threats are something we didn’t have to consider in the past. The Microsoft Cloud-based product set, in particular the security elements (Defender for Endpoint, ATP email protection, Intune for MDM) gives our whole estate a level of protection that was previously unavailable to us, all the while making it easy to administer – we only have one, simple, easy to use management platform to facilitate this function. It has also allowed us to consolidate our spend, which is pleasing to our decision makers!

 “We look forward to our long-term relationship with Transparity evolving as they guide us to the improvements that our business sees real-time value in implementing. We are encouraged that their advice helps to protect our business and saves us money.”

Keith Vant – Technical Operations Manager at Dyer & Butler