Mergers, acquisitions and divestitures are not always straightforward. The same can be said about data migrations. Quite often, depending on the size of the organisations involved, the sheer size or complexity of the datasets can provide extreme challenges to even the most seasoned IT Administrator.
It’s not always about size though, and sometimes the complexity can take other forms than just how many users and files need relocation.
PowerSyncPro is a mighty tool that can handle even the toughest AD synchronisation challenges, especially when companies merge or acquire each other. It’s not just about the basics; PowerSyncPro can roll with the punches and adapt to unexpected situations. This flexibility shows just how reliable it is as a migration and data synchronisation tool.
April 2019 saw the merger of the charities Breast Cancer Care and Breast Cancer Now, forming a single entity under the Breast Cancer Now name. The charity provides much needed support for anyone affected by breast cancer, bringing hope for the future where it is most sorely needed. The vital nature of the work they do and the support they provide meant that significant user downtime and long periods of extensive maintenance leading up to and after the migration was not an option.
The goal of the migration was the same as the goal of the merger – to unite employees from both organisations into one space, so they could communicate and collaborate seamlessly. The solution was to merge all users into a single Office 365 tenant.
In September 2019, Breast Cancer Now retained Nero Blanco to migrate the data into one combined Office 365 tenant for the new organisation. An Active Directory migration was required to effect the change in domain, but there was an additional need for some users to retain access to both domains in order for them to build and combine the business behind the scenes, so not as straightforward as flipping all users from one domain to the other.
To deliver this functionality without complex manual processes and scripts was a challenge. Nero Blanco deployed PowerSyncPro (PSP) – a clever tool designed for effective and efficient directory synchronisation.
The Office 365 migration to the new organisation tenant was completed, with PowerSyncPro syncing 580 objects between the Active Directory structures. Its sister tool, the PowerSyncPro Migration Agent seamlessly managed the migration of the Breast Cancer Care users’ 220 workstations to the new Azure Active Directory domain.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic began in the UK. New government guidelines introduced in March 2020 meant staff at Breast Cancer Now vacated their offices and began remote working from home. Completion of the project was postponed by a year.
PowerSyncPro remained active in the background over this extended period. Ticking over happily behind the scenes, it easily ensured users access to the legacy charity drives, and enabled clean-up of access to the file servers further down the line.
It worked so effectively that it was only in March 2021, when users no longer required access to the legacy system, did the team contact Nero Blanco to discuss decommissioning PSP.
This was just one situation in which PowerSyncPro didn’t just do the job as intended, but fulfilled additional requirements that called for directory synchronisation in unforeseen and unusual circumstances, which just goes to show just how robust a migration and data sync toolkit PowerSyncPro can be.
PowerSyncPro can be installed, configured and operated only as part of a professional service package from Nero Blanco IT Limited. With 50 years of combined experience working within the migration process, the Nero Blanco team are the experts you need when considering your next migration project. If you’d like to read more about the great experiences our clients have had with PowerSyncPro, then visit our Case Studies page here.
The Business benefits of PowerSyncPro