Entra ID Implementation for Hotwire Global

About Hotwire Global

Hotwire is a global technology communications, branding, and marketing consultancy. Working across 15 offices in 11 countries, Hotwire Global helps clients grow their reputation, relationships, and revenue using their 400+ team’s range of experience and expertise with all aspects of communications, branding, and digital marketing.

The challenge

Hotwire was seeking a partner to help decommission legacy servers that provided traditional authentication via Active Directory. The main reasons to move away from this infrastructure were a requirement to simplify device management and to mitigate dependency on on-premises hardware, which has limited disaster recovery capability. Key aims were to retire the on-premises server footprint, modernise to a single sign-on approach, enrol end-user devices and do this in a phased approach with partner support.

The solution

The project began with scoping and analysis. Hotwire Global walked Transparity through their existing cloud environments and server setup with a focus on ADDS, ADFS and RADIUS usage, current setup and future requirements as well as their existing end-user device setup. From this, a full migration plan was created along with what servers could be decommissioned and the Single Sign-On (SSO) configuration strategy.

Transparity migrated Slack, Egnyte and Zoom and Hotwire decommissioned their on-premises servers. Egnyte, Slack and Zoom were then set up using Entra ID SSO and Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML).

The Outcome

“Transparity doesn’t sell tech solutions; it sells confidence.  From start to finish, the Transparity team brought a professional yet friendly approach to the table that made selecting them as the partner for this project a clear choice.  Along the way, they followed their time-tested, well-documented approach to project management, providing Hotwire with complete confidence that they were in good hands.  Their approach to scoping the project was fair – helping to suggest an approach that met our desire to accurately project and control costs associated with the project, while advising on areas of technical complexity where it might be difficult to accurately provide an estimate.

“Their engineers are top-notch. Not only did they have tremendous technical knowledge, but they were absolutely professional, business and goal-focused, and they worked collaboratively with Hotwire to achieve goals and pivot as necessary as the project unfolded.  While they possess deep technical knowledge, they communicated with us on equal terms and our team felt comfortable asking all sorts of questions to fill in our knowledge gaps.”

“They recognised the importance of scheduling downtime and meeting business commitments.  At execution time, there wasn’t a rush to just get it done and check boxes; we stuck to a safe, carefully designed plan that yielded the desired results.

“All throughout, Transparity made Hotwire feel confident that they selected the right partner for the job, and the Hotwire team could rest easy throughout the process without worry.  That was a priceless experience. Transparity is a great partner and will be considered for additional work.” – Robert Stank, Vice President, Technology, Hotwire Global

As a result of the project implementing Entra ID, Hotwire was able to greatly improve resiliency and business continuity through the removal of this last remaining bit of on-premise infrastructure. As well, Hotwire no longer has any system administration, monitoring, or hardware replacement work associated with maintaining the legacy environment. The staff sleeps better at night knowing that the key points of failure in the legacy environment have been removed.