ActiveCloud by Softline has successfully completed the project to transfer the corporate Microsoft Exchange (SaaS) email, website and servers of the Moscow Jewelry Factory to the cloud. The project saved the customer the cost of maintaining its own servers.
Moscow Jewelry Factory OJSC (MYuZ) is a leader in Russia’s jewelry industry. Founded in 1920, the company has controlled a significant share of the Russian jewelry market for over 90 years now. The factory has a broad network of retail stores located in 90 Russian cities.
The company has benefited from cloud technologies as a business tool since 2006, when it started transferring its local servers to the cloud. It was back then that technical specialists of the factory made a strategic decision to work with innovative solutions. The company’s IT policy is based on the assumption that the time and labor of its employees are valued more than the fees of a cloud provider.
“It is important for us that the IT department of the company was focused on specific tasks for our business, rather than on working with servers and equipment. We outsource all of our standard processes. Renting cloud services and outsourcing IT support saves us time, money and helps us channel our employees’ efforts into the development of IT systems,” says Bogdan Kalinovsky, IT Director of Moscow Jewelry Factory.
Seven years’ worth of experience in using cloud technologies proved the effectiveness of the selected IT development strategy. Following the servers, the corporate communication system migrated to the cloud as well. The management of Moscow Jewelry Factory decided to place the company’s corporate email in the cloud. The company uses a state-of-the-art email technology — the SaaS model Microsoft Exchange, which enables a customer to have the required number of mailboxes in addition to other functionality.
ActiveCloud by Softline became a migration partner. Technical specialists of the factory and ActiveCloud transferred the first 75 mailboxes to the cloud. The service was tested for a period of three months, and the management of Moscow Jewelry Factory decided to transfer its entire corporate email to the cloud provided by ActiveCloud. The company thus benefited from an excellent communication solution that makes it possible to work with documents, tasks, schedule meetings, and work with the corporate calendar. The integration with mobile devices allows employees to stay in touch. During the 3rd quarter of 2013, several hundred email accounts and servers will be moved to the cloud.
“We decided to outsource our email and servers, because it makes no sense to spend resources on the purchase of expensive equipment and licenses, configuration and support when you can have a ready-made working service. Having tested the services of a number of providers, we chose ActiveCloud by Softline. Together with its specialists we managed to build a reliable cloud infrastructure,” says Bogdan Kalinovsky.
According to him, the main challenge to the transition to the cloud for factory was to ensure the reliability and security of the services. However, it is no longer critical for the company that email servers are deployed in the cloud from ActiveCloud, rather than locally, now that integration with Active Directory is provided.
Moscow Jewelry Factory is an experienced user of other IT tools in the cloud: CRM-systems, Microsoft SharePoint, and antivirus software. The same hosting is used to ensure load resilience and stable operation of the website.
“We intend to further develop this practice; to be the first one to apply relevant innovations,” Bogdan Kalinovsky comments on the company’s cloud-related plans.
“Cloud technologies are nothing new to Moscow Jewelry Factory,” says Evgeny Zhiltsov, Project Manager at ActiveCloud by Softline (ActiveHost RU LLC). “The company has been using various capabilities of the cloud for seven years now. As a project manager, I was pleased that such an advanced company chose ActiveCloud technologies. Thanks to the professionalism of Moscow Jewelry Factory’s technical experts, users never even noticed the migration to the cloud.”
