Sumi Agro Azure Migration Case Study

Sumi Agro Europe specialises in the development and distribution of technically advanced products, including plant protection products, fertilisers and seeds. The organisation provides proprietary products from important Japanese agrochemical manufactures together with other innovative solution from different suppliers.
 

Sumi Agro Europe Limited has a turnover in excess of £200 million with over 600 employees across Europe, and is a part of the Sumitomo Corporation, one of Japan’s leading multinational companies providing powerful platforms for product development, marketing and logistics in the agriculture sector.
 

“What impressed me the most about Atech was how they absorbed our vision and our concepts and brought them into reality.” – Pradeep Parmar, Group IT Director, Sumi Agro Europe
 

The challenge

Sumi Agro Europe needed to improve the performance of its legacy on-premise infrastructure, which was previously hosted at their London head office. With ageing infrastructure and regular performance issues causing an impact to the service delivered to its users who performed business functions on a daily basis, Sumi Agro Europe recognised that there was a need for change within the business and this was the first phase of a new digital transformation program.
 

The company’s mission is to be a global organisation that constantly stays a step ahead in dealing with change, creates new value and contributes broadly to society. Staying ahead of the competition was a key driver when creating the digital transformation strategy.
 

To support their vision, they needed a 21st century intelligent cloud platform. Having been through a selection process where they carried out a detailed assessment of other public cloud providers, it was clear that Microsoft Azure offered the best technology for today in addition to aligning with the technology roadmap of the business for the future.
 

The expectations

• Re-architect legacy platform
• Full migration utilising Azure IaaS and PaaS
• Exchange migration
• Cost-effective solution

The results

• Intelligent cloud platform
• Ability to utilise new Microsoft technology in the future
• Agility and scalability in times for global expansion and consolidation
• Microsoft 365 package

What Atech delivered

By selecting Atech Support as the partner of choice for their Azure migration, Sumi Agro Europe managed to reduce the risk of migrating to the cloud through the experience and expertise shown by Atech through the selection process. Atech had a clear strategy and migration plan that followed four key phases leading to a successful migration.
 

Phase One

Technical workshop held with Sumi Agro Europe to gather and understand their requirements.
 

Phase Two

Technical project plan and business case created including ROI for the project.
 

Phase Three

Proof of concept created, with full User Acceptance Testing (UAT) carried out to mitigate disruption.
 

Phase Four

Implementation of the migration plan, delivered seamlessly with minimal business impact.
 

A race to productivity in the cloud

This particular migration had a very aggressive timeline. The legacy systems hadn’t been maintained and managed for years and it was causing business outages and uncomfortable risks, Pradeep was new into his role but knew something had to be done and it had to be done quickly. Working with Atech he was always clear on the timeline and we collaborated together on the vision.

Utilising Azure Experts Atech to deliver agility and stability

After the successful migration to the Microsoft cloud, Sumi Agro Europe now have a fully highly available platform, delivering SLAs of 99.95%. The environment is designed to allow for global expansion, with offices throughout Europe this was always going to be the pilot environment to start consolidating the on-premise technology in the other countries. By designing the solution to allow the other countries in the future to be migrated onto the platform, enables the business to collaborate and share resources at a low cost. The technology vision was to deliver a single platform across the globe.
 

Next steps

The next step on the roadmap is to introduce the modern desktop. Using the available features in Microsoft 365, we plan to migrate all files and folders to SharePoint and OneDrive and implement governance and security through EMS and Windows 10.
 

The ongoing support from Atech comes as standard 24x7x365, maintained and managed by our team of Microsoft certified professionals, whilst delivering service and optimisation as part of quarterly reviews. This enables the client to receive a detailed overview of all new releases from Microsoft in the previous quarter to help improve their new cloud platform.
 

Discussions also take place on any general releases in Azure and Microsoft 365 over the same period along with recommendations for future improvements which can be made from a technical, service or cost optimisation perspective. This enables clients to have a continuous influx of new technology advice and service improvements whilst benefiting from the value delivered by Atech.
 

“Time was of the essence to start the digital transformation, enabling a reliable intelligent cloud platform that can be scaled globally. Atech made the transition to the cloud effortless”. – Pradeep Parmar, Group IT Director, Sumi Agro Europe
 

A team of Microsoft Experts

Atech is one of the UK’s leading Microsoft Azure migration and support partners for mid-market and enterprise clients.
 

This enables us to deliver advice on the best solutions available to meet our client’s objectives. We have a dedicated team of certified Microsoft professionals with the skills and experience to deliver our clients strategic and business requirements for cloud migrations. Our clients benefit from a secure path to the cloud with a de-risked migration strategy through the proven methodologies we have developed over 2,500 migration projects.
 

We follow Microsoft-recommended processes including the Azure Well-architected Framework which means that the architecture we design and implement is sustainable and sets your business up to drive value, performance and security from your investment in Azure.
 

Cloud Technology Experts

• IaaS infrastructure
• PaaS infrastructure
• Geo-Redundant backups
• Exchange Online
• Microsoft 365
• Logs Analytics (OMS)

Cloud consultancy

• 24/7 365 Cloud Care
• Service optimisation
• Ongoing recommendations and financial reporting
• Managed Security services to enhance your security posture

See how Atech can support you

When you choose Atech, you choose a long-term, accredited partner with experience in your sector.
 

To date, we’ve migrated 2500+ servers to the cloud, refactored and re-architected companies like yours, and continually support 15000+ users 24/7, 365 days a year. Equipped with a phased approach, talented team of certified engineers and a tailored migration strategy, we’ll provide the clear vision needed for delivering a de-risked cloud migration project that meets your organisation’s specific requirements.
 

Contact us now for direct access to one of our cloud solution engineers – let’s discuss how we can accelerate your next project.
 

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