Mayhew Case Study | Azure

The client

Mayhew is a leader in office interior design, employing more than 100 people across two offices in Ontario, Canada. It provides integrated interior design services that maximise clients’ investment in workspace, from workplace strategy all the way through to design, space management and maintenance.

Prior to Calligo, Mayhew employed a four-person IT team who devised the overall IT strategy, managed the on-premise resources and networking, and provided endpoint and application support to the business. The company was growing rapidly and for the internal IT function to keep pace with the growth and continue to provision and support all the employees to the same high standards, it would have to grow with it.

This ongoing requirement for further investment eventually created a tipping point. It became no longer financially viable for Mayhew to continue to fund and grow an internal IT department.

Service 1: IT Managed Services

Calligo provides Mayhew with a full suite of IT Managed Services, including proactive network monitoring, patch management, security, desktop optimization and warranty management. Mayhew also has an assigned Network Administrator whose responsibility it is to ensure the network is continuously operational. Key to this is a set of more than 250 best practices and functional requirements, defined with Mayhew, that are based on industry standards and Mayhew’s operational requirements, including its regulatory obligations. These include back-up schedules, network speeds, security patching regimes and similar. The Network Administrator performs regular checks of the network, including on-site visits, to identify and resolve any misalignments with the best practices before they become business risks.

Calligo also provides a 24×7 Helpdesk, contactable through chat, email and phone, to remotely support the 100+ employees with troubleshooting requests, application support and “how to” assistance. But the value of the Helpdesk does not only come from resolving the problems presented to them. Calligo’s team is also able to identify recurrent problems and isolate and remedy the root causes – a process that can be invaluable to professional services businesses.

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Service 2: Microsoft 365

Calligo’s IT Managed Services teams include a nominated Virtual CIO, or vCIO, who supports clients in their strategic IT planning. They will translate their clients’ needs and ambitions into measured IT strategies, budgets and plans, and guide clients through their implementation. They will also make recommendations for operational improvements based on input from the Helpdesk and Network Administrator.

On seeing Helpdesk data and noticing the number of disparate collaboration tools that the company was using, Mayhew’s vCIO recommended the introduction of Microsoft 365. It would prove to be a highly profitable migration. The monthly per user pricing model made clear financial sense compared to individual software licences and their renewals; while the intuitive, recognisable interfaces of Microsoft’s collaboration apps meant that users would adopt the new tools easier and experience less downtime.

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Service 3: Azure Services

Calligo also supported Mayhew in its migration to the cloud. Its on-premise hardware was nearing end of life, but the refresh costs were unacceptable. Rather than commit to CAPEX spend, Calligo advised migrating to Microsoft Azure, while keeping large CAD-based data files on new, smaller, more efficient on-premise resources.

Relying on Azure for the bulk of Mayhew’s operations would not only complement the move to Microsoft 365, but would also reduce costs, simplify the previous back-up processes and improve accessibility.

Find out more about Microsoft Azure Services