PowerSyncPro doesn’t just do the job as intended, but fulfils additional requirements that call 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.
When two or more businesses or organisations merge, there is usually a requirement for one or more of the organisations data to be migrated from its current location into somewhere more suitable, allowing access by individuals from each organisation for collaboration on the same environment.
Mergers, acquisitions and divestitures are not always straightforward however, and the same can be said of data migrations. Quite often, depending on the size of the organisations involved, the sheer size or complexity of the datasets involved 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…
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, with its sister tool the PowerSyncPro Windows 10 Workstation Migration Agent seamlessly managing 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.
Just some of the organisations who use PowerSyncPro
PowerSyncPro provided a seamless service in the process of uniting our two legacy charities to become Breast Cancer Now. A handful of staff needed continued access to our legacy drives as our businesses gradually united, and PowerSyncPro provided the ongoing directory sync required to provide this access. While it was never the intention for PSP to continue to run for over a year, we could never have foreseen the unprecedented circumstances that led to this situation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was extremely reassuring for the Breast Cancer Now IT team to know PSP was doing its thing for all those months with no interaction required PowerSyncPro™ is incredibly good at keeping things running
Nero Blanco used their excellent PowerSyncPro (PSP) tool to migrate our IT infrastructure from on-prem to the cloud while their PSP Migration Agent efficiently handled the remote migration of our existing machines. Around 95% of laptops migrated seamlessly with no issue and no downtime for our users, and Nero Blanco went above and beyond to quickly fix any issues that were generated by user error.
PSP has helped Ricoh solve challenges with a complex and widespread identity management landscape. It has provided seamless levels of object synchronization and proved to be robust and reliable.
We’ve installed, configured and operated PowerSyncPro as part of a professional service package for numerous global businesses.
