Customer story: migration of forest industry application infrastructure to Azure

The client is an international forest industry company with a focus on innovative solutions in the utilization of renewable raw materials. The company is striving to improve the efficiency of its production processes and promote sustainable practices, which is why they are looking for a partner to implement a project that supports their long-term strategic goals.

“The project manager responsible for the infrastructure migration project from on-premise to Azure demonstrated exceptional skills and professionalism throughout the process. His structured approach and careful budget management ensured that the project remained on time and within budget.

He created, monitored and continuously updated the project plan with a high level of expertise, demonstrating his ability to effectively manage complex tasks and deadlines. Utilizing Azure DevOps, he effectively tracked features, tasks, risks and bugs, ensuring that all aspects of the project were constantly under control and addressed promptly.

On a personal level, he was exceptionally calm and an excellent communicator, maintaining clarity in all interactions. His ability to manage relationships with both internal and external stakeholders was noteworthy, and he demonstrated a high level of professionalism and fostered a collaborative and productive work environment.

Overall, his contribution was invaluable to the success of the project, and his leadership and management skills were exemplary.”

- Customer feedback

The need to reform a system that has reached the end of its life cycle

The customer's significant application suite was at the end of its lifecycle in terms of infrastructure and versions. The decision to migrate the data center to Microsoft Azure was made by the customer as the result of an earlier needs assessment. 

The project planning phase had already been underway for a while before Graniitti's experienced project manager jumped on board. The need was to get the plan concrete and the implementation phase started. Under our leadership, progress was made quickly to finalize the plan, approve the cost estimate, and thereby begin the implementation phase. 

Managed transition and ensuring critical integrations

The project manager coordinated the implementation, which included installation, configuration, and testing in the new environment, as well as migration planning. Added spice was a significant number of integrations, both internal and third-party, that were a prerequisite for business continuity. 

The implementation and preparations took almost two years before the long-awaited big moment arrived. In one weekend, the entire thing was finally moved to the cloud, and in good cooperation with partners and subcontractors, we managed to complete the migration without causing any disruption to the business. 

Such a long project is inevitably affected by other ongoing changes, the schedules and impacts of which cannot always be influenced, a concrete example being the VAT change that came into effect in early autumn. We implemented strong dependency tracking with other ongoing projects in the project, which facilitated discussions about schedules and the allocation of human resources. 

Renewed infrastructure and seamless collaboration

The end result was a new infrastructure for the customer, updated processes where necessary, and for many, a memorable final press, resulting in a modern, cost-effective and high-performance platform. 

The project manager's job was to keep the project team on track, ensure the project team was on the same page, and keep the project owner and business informed and involved. It was nice to see that many people thought the most positive thing, in addition to the successful outcome, was the good working atmosphere within the project team.  

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