Supporting a smooth and productive integration for London & Partners and Med City

About London & Partners

As the business growth and destination agency for London and partly funded by the Mayor of London, London & Partners’ chief objective is to create economic growth that is resilient, sustainable and inclusive within the UK’s capital. It does this by promoting London across the world; attracting overseas organisations, events and visitors to the capital; and helping retain and grow London companies.

The challenge

When MedCity was integrated into London & Partners, it needed to bring 10-15 additional employees online to the same IT estate as its existing 200 employees. Above all, this integration would enable all employees new and old to experience the same collective suite of Microsoft services for productive and collaborative working.

Apart from making sense at an operational level, leaving these disparate users working on a separate tenancy carried potential major security risks that could not be viably managed or monitored by its IT team. So, migration onto one single environment was essential.

This process required moving the new users’ Microsoft mailboxes, files, SharePoint, OneDrive and other related data onto one common platform. MedCity had its own dedicated SharePoint library so all established links to this had to be retained. And because MedCity’s devices were Intune-registered but not Intune-enrolled, this also meant moving them into a secure Intune environment.

The solution

Transparity developed a proposal to migrate all MedCity users from their existing Microsoft 365 (M365) tenant to the London and Partners tenant. This migration would encapsulate all user email, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams data – to create one single source of truth in order to maintain security across the organisation while enabling seamless working and easy scalability.

First, we validated all data that was due to be migrated to ensure it was suitable. We also reviewed all existing Microsoft licences, particularly those relating to SharePoint and Teams site storage, to optimise the necessary resources and associated costs going forward. In this way, IT budgets could be spent wisely and only on the required licences.

Single Sign-On applications were reviewed in order to be recreated in the new tenant. All devices and data access using Intune were also reviewed, so that any data loss risks could be identified and mitigated early.

Once these checks and analyses were completed, the migration process began. SharePoint and OneDrive for Business were configured and updated on the London and Partners tenant, to receive migrated data, and tooling was set up and tested. The migration plan was mapped out in detail and all source and destination locations were validated.

London & Partners issued all MedCity users with a new Windows device, configured to its standard build and managed by them. O365 solutions and applications were integrated in one place, including Intune which was checked to ensure it still complied with the required security policies and guidelines. Teams site storage was broken down to ensure it was consistent between each user device, for a unified work experience. Employee and device identities were centralised for security best practice.

All these activities served to create one single source of identity, upon which all subsequent IT requirements could be built.

The outcome

The migration strategy and results have proved very successful, both for London and Partners as an organisation and the individual employees old and new, within it.

Everyone continued to work productively and without disruption following the migration itself. To ensure success both during and after this project, Transparity has continued to provide focused support once all cutover activities were completed. This enables the smooth execution of required activities like additional delta migrations, assistance with user queries and support for London and Partners’ own internal IT team.