View Recording: Maximizing M&A Value with Technology

Chris Blackburn Good morning everyone. 0:0:4.360 –> 0:0:7.620 Chris Blackburn Hope here week is off to a great start. 0:0:8.50 –> 0:0:28.830 Chris Blackburn Excited to talk more about what can currency has been doing in the M&A space with our customers and how we are leveraging technology to help organizations meet a myriad of different goals through these types of projects. 0:0:29.180 –> 0:0:34.0 Chris Blackburn I’m gonna give us about another moment, and then we’ll get started. 0:0:35.220 –> 0:0:39.310 Chris Blackburn While we are waiting for everyone, I’ll just go ahead and pull up. 0:0:39.400 –> 0:1:2.730 Chris Blackburn For those of you that have not attended these webinars before, which and I do recognize the number names that are in attendance right now, but for those that are new to concurrency and kind of what we do and even who this guy is that’s talking on the other side of your screen, I’m going to solutions architect here on our modern workplace team and concurrency. 0:1:3.0 –> 0:1:5.510 Chris Blackburn I’ve been here for almost 9 years at concurrency. 0:1:5.680 –> 0:1:11.570 Chris Blackburn I’ve been in the Microsoft consulting space pretty much my entire career, over 20 years now. 0:1:11.730 –> 0:1:30.420 Chris Blackburn It’s been fun kind of seeing how the advent of cloud has really evolved, how we’ve been able to use Microsoft 365 for collaboration to be able to move identity, security, email, endpoint management, all to that cloud solution. 0:1:30.510 –> 0:2:3.50 Chris Blackburn It’s really been exciting to see how the Microsoft space is really taking a big lead in terms of the the cloud, not only from each of these technologies in that modern workplace space, but also in in some of the involvement that we’ve seen for things like AI as well, which you probably may have seen some of our other webinars around AI as well, if not, definitely check them out on our YouTube page or go to concurrency.com For more information on that. 0:2:3.180 –> 0:2:5.490 Chris Blackburn Got a couple of links so here on my own for my LinkedIn. 0:2:5.500 –> 0:2:9.330 Chris Blackburn I’ve got a blog that I then maintaining for over 20 years as well. 0:2:9.440 –> 0:2:14.390 Chris Blackburn It’s hard to believe that you know someone been logging for 20 years and I’m one of those guys. 0:2:14.740 –> 0:2:21.610 Chris Blackburn So, without further ado, it’ll get give people an opportunity to wander in to the meaning. 0:2:21.620 –> 0:2:26.770 Chris Blackburn Let’s go ahead and get started in talking about M&A and technology. 0:2:26.780 –> 0:2:36.350 Chris Blackburn That’s really why we’re all here today to kind of see how they are winning combination because M&A’s are not easy as we like to say. 0:2:36.420 –> 0:2:47.170 Chris Blackburn They are one of the most stressful projects that an organization will do because it really does impact everyone, not only from the users, but also IT I’ve to leadership, etcetera. 0:2:47.250 –> 0:3:11.770 Chris Blackburn We won’t go into the details around things like integration management offices or organizational change management and this particular discussion maybe in the future, one will kind of circle back around and talk about how from a business process side, we can look at how those types of thought leadership processes can help to really drive success and efficiencies around M&A’s as well. 0:3:12.100 –> 0:3:24.470 Chris Blackburn But as we look at technology from that aspect and the goals of in and A’s and how we use technology, there’s really five goals that we try to instill within customers to have their leadership all the way down to it. 0:3:24.540 –> 0:3:42.830 Chris Blackburn And they’re in users really kind of embrace to see how they can be more successful in the key one is reduce that time to value and using these tools makes the integration process quicker by using integration and technology we can be nondisruptive perfect to production. 0:3:42.840 –> 0:3:51.910 Chris Blackburn That is probably the biggest goal of an M&A is to have the least amount of impact as possible because these will have some impact. 0:3:51.920 –> 0:3:58.830 Chris Blackburn I cannot tell you that an M&A and technology will make it not impactful, but we want to try to make it non disruptive. 0:3:58.920 –> 0:4:9.130 Chris Blackburn So that’s goal #2 probably the most important 1 #3 mitigating security risks as organizations or transitioning as users or transitioning. 0:4:9.360 –> 0:4:11.750 Chris Blackburn There’s a barrage of communications that go to users. 0:4:12.170 –> 0:4:14.840 Chris Blackburn They’re gonna get gas to do certain tasks. 0:4:14.850 –> 0:4:35.0 Chris Blackburn Certain things set up MFA, MFA, etcetera and so this is a time where usually users were bringing their guard down a little bit, but we want to mitigate those risks through the use of security tools and at the same time as we’re going through and executing and that sync probably another really important task with technology is to modernize. 0:4:35.130 –> 0:4:37.920 Chris Blackburn Let’s take a look and see what processes and what technology. 0:4:37.930 –> 0:4:50.50 Chris Blackburn Maybe we want to replace with new and exciting processes, and we’ll take a look at a lot of scenarios here in a few minutes that allow us to modernize what technology as well as being able to gain efficiencies. 0:4:50.340 –> 0:4:54.610 Chris Blackburn Why do the same thing and the same processes and the same technology over and over again? 0:4:54.620 –> 0:5:21.300 Chris Blackburn If this is giving us an opportunity to do more and to do better with the technology that we have at our disposal, so those are our key goals, but technology and then as we complement Manas, what technology, what we have seen is the organizations, the customers that have embraced the new and modernized technology as part of these projects, they’ve been the most successful as well. 0:5:21.310 –> 0:5:27.340 Chris Blackburn In thinking through their architecture, they may have opportunities to modernize that as well. 0:5:27.470 –> 0:5:51.60 Chris Blackburn That is usually the first step is understanding what’s in your environment before we can take those next steps down into actually doing integration, we’re going to plan that umm and a approach that uses the technology as well as being able to keep in mind that we want to really steer away from anything that is more legacy because additionally we found is that will usually slow down the process. 0:5:51.530 –> 0:6:8.520 Chris Blackburn And so as we think of those goals and the the North Stars as we like to call them of an M&A, we really look at kind of 70 areas as we are working with our customers, we want to accelerate how fast we can integrate and using technology can do that. 0:6:8.610 –> 0:6:13.90 Chris Blackburn We wanna simplify that user process and talking about identity as the core. 0:6:13.230 –> 0:6:26.930 Chris Blackburn We’ll get into some of the options with the quest tools that we’ll talk about and how we can simplify that process based on not only the technology side, but the human capital, the HR side as well. 0:6:27.200 –> 0:6:37.530 Chris Blackburn We’ll look at those commoditized technologies in the Microsoft space from intra ID join and autopilot and being cloud managed with technologies like Intune. 0:6:37.660 –> 0:6:56.50 Chris Blackburn Those commodity tools are going to help us to achieve that in state a lot easier, a lot more secure as we’re combining those organizations, being able to move away from any on premises dependencies, again being modernized and moving away from legacy will help us achieve that quicker. 0:6:56.270 –> 0:7:6.960 Chris Blackburn Having a streamlined and simplified security tool set is also a huge opportunity as we start to look at licensing, looking at vendors. 0:7:7.110 –> 0:7:25.670 Chris Blackburn Those are areas that, if we can consolidate, it’s going to make not only that process smoother, but also make it where we have less vendors potentially that we have to manage as we’re transitioning into a new organization and then change management, which I did mention we won’t cover any of those within this conversation. 0:7:26.30 –> 0:7:33.340 Chris Blackburn But being clear to your end users, as you are making those transitions are key to an M&A project as well. 0:7:33.910 –> 0:7:58.180 Chris Blackburn So that first step, after we usually as we are engaging with customers, one of the areas that we like to introduce, especially with customers that are in this cycle of acquisitions., they may do anywhere from one to five a year, which we do have customers that do that as they’re going through and really building out what that M&A machine looks like. 0:7:58.190 –> 0:8:4.330 Chris Blackburn That’s where we introduced the concept of the migration factory and the T shirt sizing. 0:8:4.480 –> 0:8:27.820 Chris Blackburn As we look at the directional phases when it comes to an M&A, there’s usually these five key phases and establishing that migration factory is very Goheen to the success, whether it’s going to be 1 merger, 1 divestiture, 1 acquisition or maybe it’s going to be, as I mentioned, multiple per year having a defined process is going to help make that go smoother. 0:8:28.270 –> 0:8:51.80 Chris Blackburn All that usually starts out with high level planning, whether it’s one to five a year, whether it’s just one in at all, being able to go in there and understand what’s in the environment is going to be critical to understanding what that instate is going to be, because we’re gonna have to plan and moving all these different components and we’ll talk about the different work streams here in just a second. 0:8:51.410 –> 0:9:7.840 Chris Blackburn But then as we start to then determine if we’re building a new environment, if we’re integrating into new environment, if we’re adopting new technologies as a part of that process, we have to understand what that delta is going to be or what efforts are going to be needed in doing that work. 0:9:7.850 –> 0:9:12.940 Chris Blackburn So as we go through and do that plan and build there, we define tasks that have to occur. 0:9:13.50 –> 0:9:17.240 Chris Blackburn Those defined tasks will usually have two levels of impact. 0:9:17.250 –> 0:9:36.850 Chris Blackburn It’s going to either impact our modern workplace team that’s going to impact our end users in their email, how they share files, how their PCs are managed, how they’re making phone calls, if they’re using traditional PSTN, and then the second component is going to be the data center and that usually will incapsulate things like your servers. 0:9:36.860 –> 0:9:44.130 Chris Blackburn Are you going to move your servers or you gonna Modernize those as well with Azure Paas or IaaS services? 0:9:44.300 –> 0:9:45.710 Chris Blackburn What are we doing with file shares? 0:9:45.720 –> 0:9:48.240 Chris Blackburn How we managing our applications our SSO? 0:9:48.340 –> 0:10:9.800 Chris Blackburn These are key important things that come into play when we start to do the planning and then finally that last phase is one that’s really new to the M and a story that we tell is really clean up is if even if we aren’t emerging or divesting, there’s always going to be that concept of making sure that objects are cleaned up, domain names are moved, Licensing tenants. 0:10:9.810 –> 0:10:16.70 Chris Blackburn There’s a number of different components that come into play from a technology perspective that have to be considered doing. 0:10:16.80 –> 0:10:17.620 Chris Blackburn Look at these directional phases. 0:10:17.930 –> 0:10:23.620 Chris Blackburn Usually a lot of this will happen by way of prediscovery as we start to work with organizations. 0:10:23.630 –> 0:10:27.340 Chris Blackburn Some of them have a due diligence process that they have already followed. 0:10:27.710 –> 0:10:40.630 Chris Blackburn Some of them will bring us in during that due diligence process, which I think honestly Will Lynn to the the the greatest level of success at the end of the day because we’re able to kind of come in throughout this process. 0:10:40.760 –> 0:10:57.450 Chris Blackburn And while they’re the organizations are usually doing some of that business due diligence, we can come in and do some of our what we call T-shirt sizing to help look at the technology within the environment prior to the ink drawing on the paper before access is given into the environment. 0:10:57.580 –> 0:11:17.300 Chris Blackburn There’s still some work that we can do to be able to take a look and see what’s in that environment and then as we go through and start to do some of that T shirt sizing, this concept of looking at the modern workplace strategy, the endpoint strategy, the data center strategy really do start to come front and center. 0:11:17.450 –> 0:11:25.730 Chris Blackburn And so if we think of each type of integration project would be like a different size, this one can be a small this one could be a large. 0:11:25.740 –> 0:11:30.550 Chris Blackburn This one can be a really big one that involves a large data center state. 0:11:30.560 –> 0:11:33.930 Chris Blackburn Those are usually the ones that would be like an XXL, for example. 0:11:34.320 –> 0:11:46.760 Chris Blackburn But as we start to take a look at these areas from a T shirt sizing exercise perspective, that allows us to then paint a picture to see what does it look like to move their modern workplace environment. 0:11:46.770 –> 0:11:50.30 Chris Blackburn What does it look like to manage and move devices? 0:11:50.220 –> 0:11:52.570 Chris Blackburn What does it look like from a data center perspective? 0:11:52.660 –> 0:12:22.980 Chris Blackburn What does it look like to help support that the customer in each of the organizations as they come together, or potentially even divest being able to build out this T shirt sizing Will have us being able to avoid a number of different things throughout the project from items being missed, roles being defined, tools being set up, being able to manage users and lists, which we’ll talk about towards the end of this conversation today and how to be more efficient with that. 0:12:23.120 –> 0:12:26.30 Chris Blackburn I’ll miss alignment communication and going on and on and on. 0:12:26.40 –> 0:12:41.450 Chris Blackburn There’s a lot of benefit to being able to come in from day one with this concept of T shirt sizing to be able to understand what that in game is going to look like and have a vision even before we start to touch some of the technology within the environment. 0:12:41.640 –> 0:12:56.270 Chris Blackburn And Speaking of technology, usually as we go in and talk to customers, as we start to do some of that planning, there are a number of key decisions that really will drive that technology in state behind all of these M&A projects. 0:12:56.360 –> 0:13:4.270 Chris Blackburn As we think about the concept of integrations or divestitures, we have to think about. 0:13:4.380 –> 0:13:5.980 Chris Blackburn The first step is the planning. 0:13:6.320 –> 0:13:12.910 Chris Blackburn Before we even execute a project that planning, we have to understand how vast of an impact it’s going to be in. 0:13:12.920 –> 0:13:27.730 Chris Blackburn Usually these are those six core areas that we look at as we go through and integration project and be considerate of the work streams that are involved to have a successful project at the end of the day from an M&A. 0:13:27.990 –> 0:13:49.240 Chris Blackburn And as we look at each of these areas, we can usually break these down into some of those that migration factory as we looked at the different phases as we look at phase one, we can see there’s usually quite a significant amount of security and identity work that is involved and we can see how that scoping really does a process. 0:13:49.250 –> 0:14:12.290 Chris Blackburn All the different workstreams in that phase one as we start to plan as we start to gather data build out that integration plan, we are looking at all these work streams understand what the breadth of that project is going to be as we go into phase two and three, that’s where we start to see the end user impact trying to be Non-disruptive, moving all their email, moving their computer is from source to target. 0:14:12.480 –> 0:14:33.270 Chris Blackburn And then as we’re going through and executing that collaboration in user computing, we’re then also going in and we are starting to do the work around the data center and the applications because it’s usually easier once users are in that target environment to move applications servers without it being very impactful on the end user. 0:14:33.280 –> 0:14:39.130 Chris Blackburn Now it that’s a different story, but that’s where we want to use technology to do that as effectively as possible. 0:14:39.860 –> 0:15:8.770 Chris Blackburn And as we go in and start to do some of the discovery within an environment, as we start to do discovery across all of these different workstreams, there’s a lot of insight that we need from not only our identities, our email, our servers and potentially database infrastructure, sans cloud data users and groups, et cetera, being able to wrap our arms around all of this data can be really daunting. 0:15:8.780 –> 0:15:12.850 Chris Blackburn And so this is where we use technology that’s at our disposal. 0:15:12.980 –> 0:15:14.490 Chris Blackburn We are a partner with Quest. 0:15:14.500 –> 0:15:37.860 Chris Blackburn We’ll use a tool like they’re enterprise reporter that we can go in and really capture all of this data and then be able to understand the quantity of how many users and groups are we going to be moving, being able to have a picture of where potentially we may need to do cleanup because this is a great opportunity with all these projects to go in and clean up what’s in the environment that’s not being used. 0:15:37.870 –> 0:15:38.370 Chris Blackburn That’s old. 0:15:38.380 –> 0:15:45.80 Chris Blackburn That needs to be archived as well as being able to understand the data and what potentially may need to be excluded. 0:15:45.190 –> 0:15:52.120 Chris Blackburn It’s very possible as part of a divestiture project that we only need to carve out a very small piece of the data. 0:15:52.190 –> 0:15:57.520 Chris Blackburn And so being able to have a full picture is going to be able to help us understand what we need to carve out. 0:15:57.630 –> 0:16:8.800 Chris Blackburn And then likewise, as we are doing as organizations are doing acquisitions, being able to paint a picture of the breadth of all the data is very helpful to be able to quantize what that plan is going to be. 0:16:8.810 –> 0:16:30.350 Chris Blackburn What goes into that migration playbook, so to speak, and then being able to look at each of these different data discovery points from not only cloud but also to your servers, your file servers, your SQL servers being able to have this at one place at your disposal will then help be able to really build out what that plan is going to look like. 0:16:30.460 –> 0:16:37.530 Chris Blackburn And as we go in and we look at integrations, those plans usually involve a number of different data points. 0:16:37.840 –> 0:16:41.10 Chris Blackburn We concurrency as we engage with these projects. 0:16:41.20 –> 0:16:47.650 Chris Blackburn We do have a a set playbook and a set steps that we are executing alongside with customers. 0:16:47.660 –> 0:16:57.420 Chris Blackburn There are decisions that need to be made on both sides as to what that plan is going to look like, but the goal, as you mentioned, is the beginning of this call. 0:16:57.740 –> 0:17:7.250 Chris Blackburn This is a great opportunity to transform and by having that plan in place, we have a a guide that we can take throughout that journey of integration. 0:17:7.590 –> 0:17:34.220 Chris Blackburn And so as we think of technology in that regard and we’ll start to look at a couple of slides here for the next few moments, that really kind of walk us through where there are a number of those decisions that have to happen as we do these integration projects typically day one, once this merger has started with between two organizations, this is where we will typically see that both sides want to collaborate more effectively. 0:17:34.390 –> 0:17:42.160 Chris Blackburn And so from a Microsoft 365 perspective, it’s not too uncommon to see both organizations have that as their tool set. 0:17:42.250 –> 0:17:52.120 Chris Blackburn This is where we then start to establish this organization relationships make it where they can email easier back and forth and then start to plan on how they can collaborate better. 0:17:52.730 –> 0:18:14.500 Chris Blackburn What we wanna try to avoid is a lot of rework and a lot of extra work because of how big these projects are by avoiding some of that duplicated work by having a plan in place, we can do things like having to avoid setup our guest accounts or contacts, which we’ve seen I’ve seen in a number of them integration projects. 0:18:14.510 –> 0:18:20.710 Chris Blackburn Those are things we wanna evoid by having the right technology and the right plan in place from an integration perspective. 0:18:20.720 –> 0:18:27.150 Chris Blackburn But collaboration wise, we can make that a lot easier for users on both sides to work together. 0:18:27.690 –> 0:18:36.610 Chris Blackburn And as we started to look at some of the tooling, there are a number of options out in the marketplace for migrations, for integrations. 0:18:36.660 –> 0:18:41.950 Chris Blackburn There’s the Microsoft tools that we’ve taken a look at and there is some. 0:18:41.960 –> 0:18:51.900 Chris Blackburn There’s definitely viability behind them, but they are not as mature as some of the other tool sets that are available in the market, like the quest tools, which is why we use them. 0:18:51.910 –> 0:19:0.880 Chris Blackburn Pride predominantly here and concurrency is because they are mature and they touch all the ends of an integration project. 0:19:0.950 –> 0:19:5.260 Chris Blackburn When it I’ll talk a little bit about the quest tools in a minute, but I want you back up. 0:19:5.270 –> 0:19:21.420 Chris Blackburn That fact with what it can actually do today, because there may be opportunities where with the Microsoft tools, you might just be moving email that that’s great doing cross tenant migrations is something that it can do and you can do it without any cost. 0:19:21.530 –> 0:19:27.760 Chris Blackburn Once you start to look at things like SharePoint, you can move that as well through some of the free tools that they have. 0:19:27.970 –> 0:19:38.300 Chris Blackburn Looking at the ability to do cross tenant migrations, that does come in a cost, so it’s only available as well for the Microsoft 365 enterprise customers. 0:19:38.310 –> 0:19:55.590 Chris Blackburn They have to add it on as additional subscription for the migration across the two tenants, but then as we start to look at what some of the limitations are on the SharePoint MIGRATOR or AKA the Legacy Mover, there is file size limitations. 0:19:55.600 –> 0:20:3.860 Chris Blackburn There’s permission limitations, so it’s not as powerful as some of the other tools, like what the quest on demand can do, or what a share gate can do. 0:20:4.110 –> 0:20:7.520 Chris Blackburn The same thing with the exchange cross tenant migration. 0:20:7.690 –> 0:20:17.10 Chris Blackburn There’s a lot of pre work that has to go into not only managing and setting up the identities, but also the migration of those users itself. 0:20:17.100 –> 0:20:30.150 Chris Blackburn It does do it quickly, which is nice because it is all internal to Microsoft, but there isn’t a flexibility that you have of being able to provision a user and that new environment and have them start being able to work and it as well. 0:20:30.680 –> 0:20:55.30 Chris Blackburn The other thing is well that I don’t have listed on here is there cross domain support and Microsoft has kind of been working on that in ways I think some of their larger enterprise customers is something that they have been able to support, but it’s not something that you can easily leverage to be able to have a user in one organization and be able to email out in another. 0:20:55.150 –> 0:21:1.840 Chris Blackburn And so that’s where some of the quest tools come into play, which we’ll talk about here in a second, can help to facilitate that. 0:21:1.850 –> 0:21:9.640 Chris Blackburn So as we look at those tool sets, it doesn’t allow us to not only migrate and manage, but also even doing things like prediscovery. 0:21:9.770 –> 0:21:12.740 Chris Blackburn They’ve added some really nice reports or I can go in. 0:21:12.890 –> 0:21:15.910 Chris Blackburn I can connect into a target environment or a source environment. 0:21:16.320 –> 0:21:22.630 Chris Blackburn I can run a whole bunch of reports to be able to help do some of those efforts that the things like the enterprise reporter can do. 0:21:22.640 –> 0:21:35.30 Chris Blackburn So a lot of capabilities and just being able to connect into that tenant to know how big the SharePoint sites are and how many team sites there are, how much OneDrive data or exchange is there, how many user accounts are within the environment. 0:21:35.180 –> 0:21:42.910 Chris Blackburn A lot of that prediscovery we can do very easily with the Quest tool to help us be able to plan out how big that migration is going to be. 0:21:43.20 –> 0:22:11.790 Chris Blackburn And as I mentioned before, being able to have that flexibility and building out that migration plan, having them maturity of the tool sets and the Support ability, that’s one thing that I can’t stress enough and it’s how easy you know, even as myself as someone who is certifying the quest tools, there’s always gonna be those small little questions that come up being able to reach out to them and then be able to get an answer really quickly, getting to a subject matter expert, there is a lot of value in it when it comes to executing migration. 0:22:11.950 –> 0:22:29.790 Chris Blackburn Being able to quickly access someone that has that subject matter, expert level of expertise have the Quest side to answer those questions and in any of these areas, you know that itself the most is paying for itself in that value of the licensing from the Quest side as well. 0:22:30.660 –> 0:23:2.20 Chris Blackburn So as we go and we look at the tools we’ve talked about Microsoft and Quest, there’s others in the market, but one of the things that we then start to really drill down into each of those technology areas is how do we handle email coexistence if I want to be, if I have a user account that’s source and I’m moving them over to a destination tenant and I still need to be able to email out as old co.com, how can I do that after my email accounts and then Tenant with newco.com, that’s where we can look. 0:23:2.50 –> 0:23:16.260 Chris Blackburn At tools like quests, domain rewrite capabilities to be able to facilitate that capability of being able to email out versus leveraging things like a web mail or being having to email out as new company. 0:23:16.270 –> 0:23:32.910 Chris Blackburn But you’re getting email in from old company and it gets really messy and so that’s where that SMTP integration and the domain rewrite are very nice because from day one, whether that’s inbound or outbound, you can have a unified cohesive brand experience. 0:23:32.920 –> 0:23:44.380 Chris Blackburn Being able to end to be able to email out as a new organization, or even that old organization you have that control per object to be able to control what the flow of email is. 0:23:44.580 –> 0:23:51.740 Chris Blackburn There’s a number of connectors that live within the Office 365 tenants to be able to facilitate how that email’s out. 0:23:51.900 –> 0:23:52.240 Chris Blackburn What? 0:23:52.250 –> 0:23:56.800 Chris Blackburn Your email address is during the course of an integration project. 0:23:56.900 –> 0:24:3.530 Chris Blackburn So what your brand looks like as an end user is very important throughout the course of these projects. 0:24:3.620 –> 0:24:8.610 Chris Blackburn And then at the end of the project, how do you facilitate moving your domain names? 0:24:8.620 –> 0:24:12.890 Chris Blackburn And there’s a number of options to where we work with customers as they are. 0:24:12.900 –> 0:24:35.560 Chris Blackburn In some cases, they’re doing a divestiture and in cases where this would arise, they have a new UPN going into new tenant because, you know source.com is in in that environment and we can’t use it until every user, all their documents, all their SharePoint sites, they’re OneDrive is all moved over in less. 0:24:35.570 –> 0:24:37.800 Chris Blackburn Those objects are cleaned up in the source. 0:24:37.810 –> 0:24:51.60 Chris Blackburn We can’t move that domain over and so there’s some being able to leverage tools like the Quest domain move as well as another one that we can leverage alongside of their domain rewrite. 0:24:51.70 –> 0:25:4.80 Chris Blackburn So while email is still flowing out through the respective domain names throughout the project, at the end of the project we can make it really easy to be able to transition those domain names over into that new environment as well. 0:25:4.360 –> 0:25:34.60 Chris Blackburn And then as we start to think about it and in some of these cases, this is where as we’ve worked with divestitures, organizations that are spinning off and starting up their new organization, there’s usually some domain name considerations that have to happen from what do they want their new domain name to be in the Microsoft world, what is their tenant name going to be, their vanity domain name, what do they want their users to log in with from a UPN perspective, how are we going to handle their email addressing from a rewrite perspective? 0:25:34.170 –> 0:25:36.560 Chris Blackburn What is Active Directory going to look like? 0:25:36.630 –> 0:25:43.700 Chris Blackburn These are all decisions that are key as we’re planning out that environment as we’re leveraging technology. 0:25:43.710 –> 0:25:56.320 Chris Blackburn These are technology decisions that have to be considered as you are transitioning into a new divesting, usually in an acquisition, that organization is going to adopt what is in place. 0:25:56.330 –> 0:26:2.160 Chris Blackburn But these are some key decisions that we’ve worked with customers to consider as well. 0:26:2.500 –> 0:26:6.890 Chris Blackburn So aside from the domain name, now let’s start talking about computers. 0:26:6.900 –> 0:26:9.870 Chris Blackburn Let’s start talking about Office 365 collaboration. 0:26:10.80 –> 0:26:25.550 Chris Blackburn How are we going to move those and in working with customers, there are scenarios where they have opted to go through either refreshing machines or they want to just move collaboration, which is totally doable. 0:26:25.560 –> 0:26:52.240 Chris Blackburn But typically when there’s that disconnect from my email, my Office 365 and my computer, and if I only do my collaboration at some point, I’m still gonna have to manage migrating my computer and there’s still gonna be that level of disconnect from an operational environment because my computer isn’t a domain that’s in my old Active Directory and my collaboration is in a separate domain that has my device. 0:26:52.770 –> 0:27:13.950 Chris Blackburn And so that can cause some user confusion and some user pain as well as they’re trying to access resources, which is why as we go in from a combined workstation migration approach, we have found that even though it does have some initial prep and a longer initial phase, it’s gonna lend to a better end user experience at the end of the day. 0:27:14.50 –> 0:27:26.660 Chris Blackburn And so this is 1 consideration as we start to plan out how migrations are going to occur, we start to then think about how we actually are going to migrate those PCs into that target environment. 0:27:26.710 –> 0:27:34.80 Chris Blackburn And I’ll be honest, there’s three options here, but all three of these actually can be used throughout the course of a single project. 0:27:34.90 –> 0:27:43.200 Chris Blackburn It’s very common where we’ll see in integration project, there’ll be some group of users that have older hardware and it’s just easier to give them a new device. 0:27:43.370 –> 0:27:45.310 Chris Blackburn There are going to be other swear. 0:27:45.320 –> 0:27:51.650 Chris Blackburn Maybe there’s an in storage or spares of hardware for your users. 0:27:51.780 –> 0:28:24.300 Chris Blackburn It just makes sense to do a workstation reset and maybe autopilot all those into the new environment, but typically what we found is if we can move an end users device into a new environment, a new domain and keep it to where and when they come in the next day, all the icons at the same place, all their applications are there, all their files are there, it’s gonna make that end user experience that much easier and going to have a better impact on the users and their view of this transition as well. 0:28:24.310 –> 0:28:46.10 Chris Blackburn And so that’s where we use tools like the quest on demand to be able to move them into the new environment and then also look at being able to transition them from a traditional hybrid joined desktop directly into entra ID join AKA traditional Azure AD it now being entra ID. 0:28:46.20 –> 0:28:49.990 Chris Blackburn There is a a capability to move it to be fully cloud managed. 0:28:50.240 –> 0:28:52.210 Chris Blackburn The machine is that modern managed. 0:28:52.220 –> 0:28:56.450 Chris Blackburn It’s more secure because it’s not in a traditional Active Directory domain. 0:28:56.460 –> 0:29:1.130 Chris Blackburn You don’t have to worry about a device being tombstoned or legacy. 0:29:1.500 –> 0:29:11.970 Chris Blackburn Those are there are a lot of values to going to that modern managed approach as well as part of that transition, because then you’re leveraging zero trust methodologies. 0:29:12.160 –> 0:29:14.510 Chris Blackburn You’re leveraging best in class tool sets. 0:29:14.890 –> 0:29:24.520 Chris Blackburn Why you’re not having to deploy a complex on premises management tool set and then still connect it to the cloud to be cloud managed. 0:29:24.850 –> 0:29:33.520 Chris Blackburn Gone are the days it seems almost where we’re working with customers to deploy cloud managed gateways and SCCM environments. 0:29:33.530 –> 0:29:49.630 Chris Blackburn It’s just so complex and it’s and it’s very burdensome to have those traditional management tools when tools like Intune have that same capability and allow you to have kind of that best in class toolset from a capability perspective. 0:29:50.170 –> 0:29:59.940 Chris Blackburn So thinking through the collaboration migration process, thinking through the PC migration process are very important as well. 0:29:59.950 –> 0:30:6.930 Chris Blackburn By looking at kind of that modern managed process, we can avoid the whole traditional it experience. 0:30:6.940 –> 0:30:16.380 Chris Blackburn So this is taking us back to the being thoughtful about how can we improve our technologies through these migration processes. 0:30:16.510 –> 0:30:32.630 Chris Blackburn We can improve our IT teams workloads and how they would deploy machines, or potentially how they would refresh machines if something happens where a machine needs to be rebuilt on a lot of cases. 0:30:32.640 –> 0:30:39.410 Chris Blackburn Traditionally, you’d have to ship it to a corporate location or come to a location that’s close to you. 0:30:39.420 –> 0:30:49.880 Chris Blackburn But in the advent of work, promote and work from home, that’s becoming less and less realistic from end user Support perspective. 0:30:49.970 –> 0:30:52.500 Chris Blackburn Plus, having to go through image machines. 0:30:52.730 –> 0:30:55.40 Chris Blackburn Get it shipped to corporate location? 0:30:55.210 –> 0:30:58.920 Chris Blackburn Put an image on it, ship it back out is overburdensome. 0:30:58.970 –> 0:31:11.400 Chris Blackburn It does not have to do that anymore, especially when they can look at something like an Autopilot managed process where I as an IT admin I can have a machine drop shipped to users location. 0:31:11.690 –> 0:31:12.640 Chris Blackburn They turn it on. 0:31:12.890 –> 0:31:25.730 Chris Blackburn They start different vision process and then within an hour or two, not only is there device modern, managed and zero trust, but it’s connected to the autopilot and Intune their applications can stream down and then they’re ready to work. 0:31:25.880 –> 0:31:30.70 Chris Blackburn So it’s not only easier for it, but there’s less of an infrastructure as well. 0:31:30.120 –> 0:31:38.210 Chris Blackburn So this is a perfect scenario when it comes to your devices, where this is a great opportunity to modernize that experience. 0:31:38.540 –> 0:32:13.820 Chris Blackburn And then as we start to look at some of the tool sets that live within our environments that live on our machines, this is where thinking about what existing licensing and to spare it tools maybe within your environment and where potentially looking at moving to the Microsoft 365, E 5 being able to streamline and strengthen that tool set will allow you to have better, best in class tools without having multiple vendors that you’re working with to be able to have those security and compliance tools within environment. 0:32:13.910 –> 0:32:33.150 Chris Blackburn And so this is a this is a real life example of a customer actually several customers have very that we’re working with have a very similar tool set in their environment as we start to look at where we can have maybe four or five or six or etcetera of vendors within your environment. 0:32:33.380 –> 0:32:55.180 Chris Blackburn This is where we could look at something like Microsoft 365, either E3 plus E5 security, or fully E5 to be able to help improve visibility and threats and be able to close some security gaps and even being able to leverage some of the AI tools that are coming out through, you know, copilot for security copilot, for Intune. 0:32:55.250 –> 0:33:8.560 Chris Blackburn Those were where we can use some of the tools that are within that five stack to be able to have a single best and platform approach versus maybe a best in breed approach. 0:33:9.70 –> 0:33:12.320 Chris Blackburn And so this is where I’m looking at some of those tool sets. 0:33:12.470 –> 0:33:16.780 Chris Blackburn We can use consolidated security to improve threat protection. 0:33:17.0 –> 0:33:33.890 Chris Blackburn Being able to look across the estate to not only be able to protect our users, but protect their data in the cloud, protect servers and your environment, even protecting some of your hardware that may exist in manufacturing space through things like IoT. 0:33:33.960 –> 0:33:47.650 Chris Blackburn These are all scenarios where threat protection and embroiling that down into one single tool set is going to include and improve your security posture and give you additional insights that you might not have had with traditional tools as well. 0:33:48.280 –> 0:34:22.170 Chris Blackburn And then as we start to look at throughout protection features, there are a number of third party tools like QUALSYS and Secure Works that are typically layered on top of a tool like a carbon black that you’re then looking at multiple different tools to help you close those security gaps when you can extend that capability through Microsoft Defender by adding on things like honorability management to be able to have a number of these premium capabilities to be able to do things like look at your security baselines, look at vulnerable applications. 0:34:22.770 –> 0:34:28.60 Chris Blackburn One of my favorite browser extensions I can look at browser extensions that are deployed across my estate. 0:34:28.70 –> 0:34:30.740 Chris Blackburn That not only live in Chrome, but also edge. 0:34:30.790 –> 0:34:42.760 Chris Blackburn So if there are extensions that I wanna block in the environment, it makes it easier for me to see where those are within my estate being able to look at maybe expired digital certificates to be able to see where I might need to do cleanup. 0:34:42.830 –> 0:34:51.340 Chris Blackburn From that regard, looking at things like network shares, being able to even get reports on versions of firmware and hardware. 0:34:51.350 –> 0:35:5.330 Chris Blackburn So if my hey my network printers or my laptops have an older firmware version, I have all that reporting capability built into M365 without having to have a separate Bolton tool. 0:35:5.860 –> 0:35:41.790 Chris Blackburn And then as we start to look at where a lot of different States and different industries are becoming more and more regulated, being able to have some of that tool set through E5 or E5 compliance to be able to do things like records retention, management being able to do labeling, those are important as well being able to do E discovery where it’s needed, being able to even look at things like insider risk, which is a very, it’s a growing area that there are great tools through E5 compliance to be able to look at how am I. 0:35:41.850 –> 0:35:49.100 Chris Blackburn Users are communicating, being able to set up barriers between different parts of business units where they are legally required to do so. 0:35:49.110 –> 0:36:4.760 Chris Blackburn Being able to look at the risk score of a user to see if their behavior is changing and using AI to be able to potentially prevent them from accessing resources without it being too late and someone already having exfiltrated data outside of your organization. 0:36:5.270 –> 0:36:26.350 Chris Blackburn All these are great scenarios as we’re thinking about it and A where we can look at technology and see if there might be something better or be able to make that change as users are in that process of change and it is in that process of change being able to leverage those better tools from an IT perspective. 0:36:26.980 –> 0:36:29.670 Chris Blackburn And this is a great opportunity to do that as well. 0:36:30.80 –> 0:36:37.630 Chris Blackburn And so as we were talking with customers, there’s usually a couple of scenarios that they’re looking at from a licensing perspective. 0:36:37.640 –> 0:36:45.830 Chris Blackburn And I always look to share this because it’s a little bit of a black box in terms of what do you do when you’re doing an acquisition or divestiture. 0:36:45.870 –> 0:36:51.170 Chris Blackburn And there is really those 3 core scenarios and I can add licenses to EA if I’m acquiring company. 0:36:51.340 –> 0:36:59.410 Chris Blackburn If I am a smaller organization, I can do it through a CSP and in some larger organizations where we’re working with customers, they have enterprise agreement. 0:36:59.850 –> 0:37:2.920 Chris Blackburn This is where they can then initiate what’s called a bridge agreement. 0:37:2.930 –> 0:37:6.540 Chris Blackburn So then licenses live in both tenants for a period of time. 0:37:6.550 –> 0:37:10.880 Chris Blackburn I can then say, OK, I’m I’m acquiring a company, they’re 500 users. 0:37:10.970 –> 0:37:16.620 Chris Blackburn I don’t wanna have to pay for 1000 licenses for the course of three to six to 12 months. 0:37:16.700 –> 0:37:34.640 Chris Blackburn Microsoft is usually very gracious and letting you have that bridge agreement, so then licenses live in both environments through the course of that migration and so being able to have that flexibility not only with Microsoft side is definitely a time saver when it comes to migration and integration as well. 0:37:35.60 –> 0:37:51.990 Chris Blackburn Looking at voice, this is a great opportunity with these types of projects to move away from a traditional phone system because in a lot of scenarios and talking with customers, those desk phones have been sitting there and no one’s been using them for a long time because of the advent of teams, meetings and headsets. 0:37:52.0 –> 0:38:1.580 Chris Blackburn And you know your end users are typically leveraging those to connect with customers and with each other instead of making traditional PSTN phone calls. 0:38:1.590 –> 0:38:8.150 Chris Blackburn So this is a great opportunity really to scale back on your phone footprint and be able to leverage tool like teams. 0:38:8.270 –> 0:38:17.520 Chris Blackburn It’s a great opportunity to look at servers and being able to see which ones of those may or may not being used, or maybe they are outdated. 0:38:17.530 –> 0:38:54.0 Chris Blackburn It’s very common for customers will be on older versions of Windows and this is a great opportunity as they’re looking across the estate to scale back in some of their resources and it gives them a great opportunity to look, to modernize how they’re using file shares as well and potentially moving those from those traditional file stores or Nas into something like Azure files, because a lot of cases, most collaboration is being done in platforms like SharePoint and teams, file shares are maybe traditionally where you’ve got some legacy information that you wanna keep around, but you don’t. 0:38:54.60 –> 0:38:58.950 Chris Blackburn Want to keep a file server around to do that, so it’s a great opportunity to look at your file estate. 0:38:59.160 –> 0:39:7.320 Chris Blackburn It’s a great opportunity to look at potentially how you might be leveraging services or resources like remote desktop. 0:39:7.330 –> 0:39:14.410 Chris Blackburn We have a number of customers that have aging or remote desktop farms and they want to do something more modernized. 0:39:14.420 –> 0:39:16.130 Chris Blackburn They want to be able to get more flexibility. 0:39:16.140 –> 0:39:32.260 Chris Blackburn They don’t want to have to manage a server infrastructure to do that, so moving to things like Azure virtual desktop or maybe Windows 365 PC or it’s becomes more commoditized to spin up and spin down versus scaling out from a server infrastructure. 0:39:32.330 –> 0:39:38.680 Chris Blackburn So having that personal desktop or that virtual desktop approach is very convenient as well. 0:39:38.990 –> 0:40:11.750 Chris Blackburn And as we’re looking at network topology, that’s some really big component of a merger and acquisition or even in divestiture as understanding your network and being able to look at how you’re going to take those resources and potentially shift them to the cloud, that usually will require some integration with Azure as well to be able to build out those new managed networks to be able to build out a proper Azure landing zone where you’re putting resources like you’re management network and your identity resources and your servers and anything customer facing. 0:40:11.940 –> 0:40:19.500 Chris Blackburn Those are great opportunities from a networking perspective to look at micro segmentation as well to make it where your networks are more secure. 0:40:20.370 –> 0:40:30.840 Chris Blackburn And then at the end of the day, as we think about all of these different decisions, they’re usually going to be, they’re going to be a part of that planning process. 0:40:30.850 –> 0:40:43.460 Chris Blackburn That process from how we’re going to execute not well, what steps are we going to execute is usually where we work with customers to sit down and build out their specific M&A playbook. 0:40:43.550 –> 0:41:5.590 Chris Blackburn And then as we engage with them to build into actually perform the migration, that’s where we’ll then work with them to build out a runbook, especially with customers that are on that annual cycle of a couple of in of acquisitions in year, having that having the tools in place and the Technology refreshed as we talked about through each of these decisions. 0:41:5.810 –> 0:41:22.220 Chris Blackburn And then having a repeatable process that staff can use to execute these processes adds a lot of value from a technology perspective, when it comes to leveraging an executing and merger and acquisition. 0:41:22.850 –> 0:41:51.290 Chris Blackburn And then as we look to really build out that M&A playbook, usually looking at an integration schedule, so a high level project plan, so to speak, which is then accustomed accompanied by a project plan of actual runbook and execution steps are important to leveraging technology to look at each of these different areas from a modern workplace perspective, which we can see in the work stream at the top. 0:41:51.360 –> 0:42:9.940 Chris Blackburn And then in data center perspective that we can see it that workstream at the bottom all of these or part of that full integration story and and being able to have that playbook to help spell that out and being able to have made those decisions from a technology perspective are all important as well. 0:42:10.490 –> 0:42:12.540 Chris Blackburn So let’s talk a little bit about the technology. 0:42:14.510 –> 0:42:19.950 Chris Blackburn Let’s look at how we can leverage technology to make that migration process easier. 0:42:20.240 –> 0:42:22.290 Chris Blackburn So we talked about Quest. 0:42:22.380 –> 0:42:47.560 Chris Blackburn We talked about why quest because it’s more mature tool, it’s got great support ability, but it’s also really easy from day one to be able to come in and connect your tenants together, to be able to do a discovery, to be able to have reports to be able to do data sync all from 1 pane of glass and not have to have multiple tools for one for your email, one for your identities, one for your computing. 0:42:47.690 –> 0:42:51.860 Chris Blackburn There’s a lot of value to having one single tool set this. 0:42:53.300 –> 0:42:53.930 Chris Blackburn Excuse me? 0:42:54.0 –> 0:42:58.330 Chris Blackburn There’s one tool set allows us to then take a look at that. 0:42:58.340 –> 0:43:19.280 Chris Blackburn Those foundational components, first one being identity being able to have a workflow that will allow us to ensure that identity is not only that are on Prem, excuse me, but also in the cloud in Azure entra ID are synchronized that the quest tools allow us to do that as well. 0:43:19.290 –> 0:43:21.440 Chris Blackburn And this is a real live workflow. 0:43:22.290 –> 0:43:37.440 Chris Blackburn I’ll I’ll Customer scenario and how it looks at work day to understand if there are active Employees, if those employees are objects are in entra ID only which typically we find with the shared mailboxes or other resource mailboxes or other type of service accounts. 0:43:38.70 –> 0:43:48.40 Chris Blackburn Those are all identity components that are important and will need to be either a integrated or migrated as part of that identity orchestration. 0:43:48.50 –> 0:43:55.550 Chris Blackburn So having a great tool and great process that can ensure your success and identity is typically the very first step. 0:43:55.660 –> 0:44:12.420 Chris Blackburn And then from there looking at collaboration tools, being able to make sure that your data from your email boxes is moved over into that target environment as well and operate the same way as a traditional exchange hybrid migration. 0:44:12.430 –> 0:44:45.440 Chris Blackburn For those of us that have been in it a while, that first made those moves from traditional on Prem exchange to the cloud using that mail replication service, this is very similar with the Quest tool sets where it just looks at that first initial copy of your data and then look at the incremental moves as well the quest tools that on demand suite have that ability to do that from a collaboration migration perspective on the email side, let’s talk a little bit about SharePoint because SharePoint is its own beast as well. 0:44:45.450 –> 0:44:51.970 Chris Blackburn When it comes to Microsoft APIs and throttling, when it comes to SharePoint, I’ve seen it many, many times. 0:44:51.980 –> 0:45:5.970 Chris Blackburn Microsoft has their windows of time where they make copying data from a SharePoint environments a little bit quicker, but in a lot of cases they have their own limitations and Quest has to abide by those limitations so they don’t get. 0:45:6.260 –> 0:45:25.900 Chris Blackburn But in a throttling timeout, when it comes to copying a lot of your data, so the tools have that ability to smart copy the data and being able to look at speeds and then understand if I need to slow down and be able to prioritize other users, the quest migration tools have that capability as well. 0:45:26.190 –> 0:45:34.600 Chris Blackburn They also have the ability to help us orchestrate that end user computing move and being able to in this is another real world. 0:45:34.610 –> 0:45:43.430 Chris Blackburn So workflow of how we execute computer migrations, there’s a number of steps that have to go into that process as well. 0:45:43.540 –> 0:46:9.900 Chris Blackburn A lot of those, especially as we start to think about identity, start to boil down to that wave planning process, which is as crucial as actually doing the migration itself as knowing who to needs to move and when they need to move and do they need to move within groups and that’s how we do some of the way planning and some of the organizational change management as part of these projects and we’ve got great technology tool to help facilitate that, which I’ll talk about at the end. 0:46:10.430 –> 0:46:20.800 Chris Blackburn But being able to move workstations along the same time as moving our identity synchronization or collaboration migration is very important as well. 0:46:21.30 –> 0:46:37.860 Chris Blackburn And so it was part of that in any integration project, we are typically taking a look at the tool sets that live within the source environment that have been installed on the computer and all these typically have to be removed as well you. 0:46:37.870 –> 0:46:51.780 Chris Blackburn And then as part of this migration process, as we come back here to looking at the migration workflow, typically as we’re going through at the time of migration, we’re also going through and executing these steps as well. 0:46:51.790 –> 0:47:1.270 Chris Blackburn We’re cleaning off a machine of their Intune configuration and they printer applications their security tools because as we’re transitioning, we’re modernizing and we’re improving. 0:47:1.350 –> 0:47:10.540 Chris Blackburn So in a lot of cases, we’re no longer using AD LAPS, we’re using Windows Labs, which is in an intra ID where using defender for endpoint. 0:47:10.550 –> 0:47:11.680 Chris Blackburn We’re not using other tools. 0:47:12.60 –> 0:47:20.140 Chris Blackburn They’re getting rid of SCCM so there’s a process of preparation from a technology perspective that we have to prepare a machine. 0:47:20.190 –> 0:47:29.980 Chris Blackburn So that way when we do join them into this new environment, the cleaner on the legacy tools are done and they’re ready for the end users to use as well. 0:47:30.890 –> 0:47:54.200 Chris Blackburn And so from a PC migration perspective, I’m not gonna go through all the details here, but in using quest on demand and being able to do the intra ID migration, there are a number of steps that have to go on behind the scenes to prepare that machine to come from a source environment and move into a new target environment. 0:47:54.330 –> 0:48:9.100 Chris Blackburn Those typically involve some key processes like downloading user mapping files from quest to say, OK, I know in the source environment that this said I’m I’m I and UPN and in the target environment on this side and UPN. 0:48:9.140 –> 0:48:14.770 Chris Blackburn So I need to know that I need to have that mapping so that way I can update the permissions on my profile. 0:48:14.780 –> 0:48:19.850 Chris Blackburn I can ensure that Autopilot has cleaned up and that Intune is cleaned up from the workstation. 0:48:19.860 –> 0:48:25.430 Chris Blackburn I can create a scheduled task that will make sure that end users target UPN is set. 0:48:25.440 –> 0:48:29.720 Chris Blackburn It will make sure that the BitLocker key has been escrowed to the new environment. 0:48:29.730 –> 0:48:31.830 Chris Blackburn It will set the primary user in Windows. 0:48:31.840 –> 0:48:34.880 Chris Blackburn It will clean up any local admin groups and then actually perform the cutover. 0:48:35.470 –> 0:49:13.770 Chris Blackburn So these are steps that you don’t have to perform manually as part of a migration and these all happen so quickly that within usually 20 minutes the end users machine is ready for them to use and the new environment versus having to spend hours rebuilding a machine and days if not weeks reinstalling applications, putting all your data back where it was, reconfiguring all of your application settings, giving the end user this experience of migrating their machine into the new environment seamlessly is worth its weight in gold in terms of being able to save them those frustrations. 0:49:14.630 –> 0:49:18.40 Chris Blackburn And then afterwards that day, one is easier. 0:49:18.210 –> 0:49:22.130 Chris Blackburn They’re going in after they have completed that migration. 0:49:22.330 –> 0:49:25.40 Chris Blackburn They can run this desktop migration agent as well. 0:49:25.50 –> 0:49:39.40 Chris Blackburn Now that they’re computer is transitioned and then all of their collaboration applications are transitioned as well from their outlook to their office license to their OneDrive to their teams quote and asterisk, new teams support is coming soon. 0:49:39.50 –> 0:49:39.960 Chris Blackburn It’s not there yet. 0:49:40.10 –> 0:49:52.110 Chris Blackburn Still have to do that manually, but being able to deliver this experience to your end users silently and having it happen behind the scenes makes that life it makes their life easier on day one as well. 0:49:52.720 –> 0:50:7.470 Chris Blackburn And let’s take a look at the now we’ve gone through that journey of an end user and what that looks like and some of the technology decisions to help make the emanate process easier. 0:50:7.560 –> 0:50:19.400 Chris Blackburn How do we make that emanate process easier for our IT teams, our business leaders to be able to start doing planning around, how does that migration process happen? 0:50:19.410 –> 0:50:39.670 Chris Blackburn Smoother to know who needs to move when and so one of the things that we have been plagued with and I’m not going to call Bill Dailey out on the phone on the phone, but I’m call Bill help because he’s lived this, he’s lived this headache all of his life when it comes to working with us on the business process side, I concurrency and projects. 0:50:39.680 –> 0:50:42.10 Chris Blackburn But list management this is. 0:50:42.230 –> 0:51:12.650 Chris Blackburn I’m not sure if these are actual lists, but in terms of being able to look at what it means to go through and manage a myriad of different spreadsheets and know how and when to move, users has just been an absolute pain and so one of the things that we have realized that if we can make the wave planning process easier and build in technology behind the scenes to help it be orchestrated easier, that also adds value from an M&A process perspective. 0:51:12.880 –> 0:51:57.920 Chris Blackburn And so we have developed the tool and called our concurrency automator that as we go into integration projects, even identity might management projects that working with customers that have done M&A’s and they’re still through with different Active Directory domains and consolidating them because they walked in with a single collaboration integration approach versus a combined end user workstation, Active Directory domain approach being able to help them move these resources and being able to move PCs into entra ID or make sure user accounts live inside of the target environment being able to empower customers to manage this process. 0:51:58.440 –> 0:52:33.920 Chris Blackburn And without having to send Excel spreadsheets back and forth and see them being update becoming outdated and the problems behind doing list management is something that we’ve stripped very hard over the last year or so to to have that tool set to be able to help us do that as well as being able to not only control what waves that are in users are part of, but being able to actually have some really comprehensive reporting to be able to look at our users across the environment. 0:52:33.930 –> 0:52:50.150 Chris Blackburn So being able to pull data from disparate Active Directory environments, disparate Office 365 tenants, being able to combine them into a single view, these power BI reports really do help with some of our wave planning to make lives easier. 0:52:50.460 –> 0:52:59.690 Chris Blackburn And you know from a high level architecture, the nice thing about the concurrency automator is it doesn’t live in the actual application. 0:52:59.900 –> 0:53:8.30 Chris Blackburn It does live in our the concurrency environment and then we’ve got a collection server that will usually leverage to pull this information. 0:53:8.180 –> 0:53:12.770 Chris Blackburn But when it comes to the actual data itself, you as a customer own that data. 0:53:12.840 –> 0:53:14.570 Chris Blackburn That data lives within your tenant. 0:53:14.660 –> 0:53:26.700 Chris Blackburn We simply provide a front end to be able to interface with that and all of the logic to be able to help use all the data within your environment to be able to help with planning. 0:53:27.410 –> 0:53:38.530 Chris Blackburn So we we covered the whole gamut of how decisions around your technology you’re going to help make an M&A process better. 0:53:38.540 –> 0:54:6.110 Chris Blackburn And at the other side of an M&A, make it where you have streamlined and strengthened your IT environment and we would love that opportunity to connect with you if you have an M&A that you’re you’re planning, if you are considering creating your own M&A playbook or maybe you have a playbook and you like for us to kind of take a look at it based on our best practices that we’ve established, we’d love to connect with you. 0:54:6.460 –> 0:54:15.150 Chris Blackburn We love to help with any and A’s and taking our experience over the last, I want to say six years that I’ve been in concurrency doing integration projects. 0:54:15.260 –> 0:54:25.330 Chris Blackburn It’s been fun seeing the technology of all that’s been fun working with are amazing team to help evolve our processes and we wanna put that to work for you. 0:54:25.340 –> 0:54:30.430 Chris Blackburn So if you have a an M&A project that you’re thinking about, definitely reach out. 0:54:30.900 –> 0:55:5.60 Chris Blackburn Amy has dropped link in the chat of not only the survey of what you thought of this presentation, which I’d love to see, but if you have any projects that are coming up, not only from an M&A perspective, but maybe you just want to streamline and strengthen your technology stack on Microsoft 365, maybe for concurrency to come in and kind of take a look at your tools and maybe even help you put together an action plan around these specific areas where maybe you have 510 different vendors that you use for your security. 0:55:5.330 –> 0:55:11.960 Chris Blackburn It’s not even uncommon to see customers have five or ten other technologies that they use just in their inpoint management. 0:55:12.190 –> 0:55:28.530 Chris Blackburn I did another webinar through the Microsoft 365 user group here in Minnesota just around Intune, but those are all great opportunities where we love to connect with you and help you navigate through your technology stack and potentially help you. 0:55:28.540 –> 0:55:36.180 Chris Blackburn Not only save money with some of that Licensing, but also help your IT teams save time as well. 0:55:36.440 –> 0:55:39.50 Chris Blackburn So in closing, we’re here to help. 0:55:39.60 –> 0:55:41.70 Chris Blackburn We definitely would love to connect with you. 0:55:41.160 –> 0:56:12.470 Chris Blackburn Please feel free to go through and fill out that survey link that’s in the chat and then Chris writing a great to have you on the call asked a really great question about acquisitions, that are gsuite targeted and I didn’t go into detail on this particular call, but we have experience with the quest tools as well, Quest bot, meta logics, a few years back. 0:56:12.480 –> 0:56:23.110 Chris Blackburn So actually they have a whole tool set that you can use to move data from G suite and integrate that into your Microsoft 365 environment. 0:56:23.300 –> 0:56:36.880 Chris Blackburn And you know from the perspective of even doing some of the native email moves out of Gmail into exchange, Microsoft has actually really awesome tool sets with their exchange migration tools. 0:56:36.890 –> 0:56:53.820 Chris Blackburn When it comes to the email and then being able to leverage a tool like the meta logics migrator as well can help to move all the data that’s in the Google Workspaces in the Google drives, being able to have that singular story, we’ve got experiences there too. 0:56:54.10 –> 0:56:55.270 Chris Blackburn Chris, you know how to get ahold of me. 0:56:55.280 –> 0:57:6.210 Chris Blackburn If you want to talk further, I’d be happy to to help you with that in terms of being able to take non Microsoft tools and have those integrated into your Microsoft stack. 0:57:6.300 –> 0:57:8.330 Chris Blackburn So I do have a few more minutes. 0:57:8.340 –> 0:57:40.470 Chris Blackburn If anyone else has any other questions, if there are some slides that they wanna see any further, happy with to be able to show you those in terms of kind of the, I think probably one of the other key slides that I always love to show from a technology perspective really is kind of this one here being able to show you know all the different quest tools and being able to move them not only for the ones that are Microsoft, but there’s a lot of cases to where there’s other scenarios outside of just the collaboration in. 0:57:40.520 –> 0:57:52.460 Chris Blackburn User computing that there’s a number of request tools when it comes to your data and enhanced security, a lot of them within that stack as a quest partner, we definitely would love to kind of sit down. 0:57:52.470 –> 0:58:1.220 Chris Blackburn And even if you’re not doing a merger and acquisition, there may be some opportunities to look at what some of those tools can help to do to help support. 0:58:1.330 –> 0:58:18.940 Chris Blackburn Just even management, they have a really in-depth, not only Microsoft management stack, but if you have a number of database platforms, things like Oracle, Microsoft SQL, Non SQL that you’re looking to wrap your arms around, they’ve got some great management tools for those. 0:58:19.190 –> 0:58:42.60 Chris Blackburn But in terms of being able to use that quest on demand migration and kind of there five key areas from not only being able to do some of the project management for workload assessment, helping with client updating, but then also discovery migration and coexistence, they’ve got some fantastic tools that really do make life easier when it comes to evening projects. 0:58:42.620 –> 0:58:45.680 Chris Blackburn So that said, I think we’re right at time. 0:58:45.980 –> 0:58:46.510 Chris Blackburn Definitely. 0:58:46.520 –> 0:58:47.770 Chris Blackburn Please fill out that survey. 0:58:47.780 –> 0:58:57.100 Chris Blackburn Would love to hear what you thought of this presentation and hope to be able to connect with you and your M&A project against him. 0:58:57.870 –> 0:58:58.570 Chris Blackburn Have a great day.