Adopting Cloud-Only Approach to Streamline Business Functions

During an exercise to break the parent company into several companies, they determined that their Magazine, Catalog and Logistics business needed to be free-standing and pulled away from the rest of the organization, including technology assets such as networks, servers, data, and personnel. In addition, due to having significantly aged, end-of-life, and high-cost infrastructure from top to bottom, LSC set forth a technological leap forward leveraging a cloud-only approach and the highly integrated Microsoft Technology suite of solutions. 
 
LSC selected Protera to perform a lift and shift of 600 managed servers, hundreds of applications, 67 database instances, and 84 hypervisors - migrating and consolidating them onto Microsoft Azure. Alongside the migration project, over 100 servers were rolled into a disaster recovery environment. 
 
Protera guided LSC in building a strategic 12-to-18-month modernization roadmap, examining each location's modernization, risk assessment, and strategy from a network perspective. Protera deployed and manages LSC’s 20 global locations for WAN and LAN, including managed carrier interfaces, wireless access points, managed switches, firewalls, routers, and SD-WAN. A SIEM and SOC solution was also provided for all servers in the environment and endpoints across the enterprise. 
 
End-user management services were provided via M365 for 4,000 end users, and an AVD rollout to support modern work was implemented for 1,000 end users. Additionally, a help desk was deployed and managed for level 1 and level 2 support for 4,000 end-users and legacy VOIP has been replaced across the business with Teams Voice. 

Embracing Cloud Native Technology to Drive Innovation Initiatives

Now live on Azure, LSC has taken advantage of cloud-native technologies that support their innovation initiative. “Running on Azure, innovation falls into my lap every day,” says Garret Fitzgerald, Chief Digital Officer.  
 
Fitzgerald and the team continue to drive a ‘cloud-only’ approach to technology at LSC. The team is using Microsoft CoPilot utilizing OpenAI in their M365 environment as well as for GitHub to expand DevOps best practices and communication across the organization.  
 
The team has also adopted an integrated ecosystem utilizing no code RPA (robotic process automation) tools such as Microsoft Power Automate and industry leading enterprise data visualization tools like PowerBI.  And recently, Protera installed Azure Stack HCI on premise in facilities to extend the Azure Cloud into the manufacturing edge.