Deluxe Moves to the SharePoint Cloud with Confidence

THE CHALLENGE

To aid collaboration and drive innovation across the company, Deluxe uses Microsoft SharePoint. However, as Deluxe’s content and user base grew, Deluxe soon realized that SharePoint’s out-of-the-box tools could not provide the level of permissions management needed to enforce security policy and control the level of data being stored, accessed and shared across the environment by the company’s 6,000+ users.

The company needed a powerful SharePoint administration tool to fix the gap. Specifically, Deluxe sought a tool set that would help it:

• Control the entire SharePoint environment through one interface
• Easily and securely manage permissions across its 4,000+ sites
• Manage content, apps, and feature administration
• Strengthen SharePoint security and governance
• Simplify migration preparation from SharePoint 2007 to 2010

Furthermore, like many organizations, Deluxe operates a very lean IT department. As SharePoint workloads increased, server management tasks quickly became a burden. In a bid to address these concerns, while reducing costs, Deluxe began developing a roadmap to SharePoint in the cloud.

THE SOLUTION

Deluxe chose Metalogix ControlPoint to manage its SharePoint 2007 environment and future migration projects.

An industry-leading administration and governance tool, ControlPoint is purpose-built for SharePoint and lets users automatically enforce governance and administer complex SharePoint environments with ease – from a single interface.

Brian Gullickson, SharePoint Technology Manager at Deluxe, sums up the features and benefits:

“As an on-premises SharePoint Administrator, ControlPoint fills several gaps that are not available out-of-the-box regarding SharePoint user administration and governance. ControlPoint is a fast, fluid, and easy to use product that provides necessary reporting on items such as user permissions, usage and auditing, as well as system configuration. Using ControlPoint to enforce governance policies has been instrumental in my ability to manage data sprawl and protect our environment from becoming unusable over time.”

To address its growing business and IT requirements, in 2013 Deluxe began the migration process from SharePoint 2007 to 2010. At the same time, the company set about deploying an Office 365 cloud platform to support external collaboration activities and high availability for business continuity teams.

ControlPoint proved essential to the migration: “I’m always thrilled when I can use an existing tool for a purpose that it wasn’t initially intended and that’s what happened during our migration process. Using ControlPoint, I can easily verify system configurations between test and production environments, as well as between our on-premises and cloud environments,” said Gullickson.

THE RESULTS

With Metalogix ControlPoint, Deluxe realized the following benefits:

• Enhanced visibility, ease-of-use and control – With ControlPoint, Gullickson can manage user access privileges with ease, gain visibility and control into usage, find and remove outdated content, and respond quickly to audit requests. “ControlPoint fills the functionality gap that isn’t available out-of-the-box – I can’t manage SharePoint without it.”
• Huge time savings – By reducing manual processes and simplifying the administration of complex and changing environments, ControlPoint has had a big impact on efficiencies: “My time has been freed up by at least 40 percent, with more to come as we take advantage of all its features.”
• Cost mitigation – By automating and simplifying complex SharePoint management and migration tasks, previously costly and burdensome tasks can now be handled effortlessly in-house. “Metalogix made these tasks easy. I could have spent 10 times the amount of money hiring a consultant to do what ControlPoint allowed me to do in a few simple steps.”
• Automated governance – Internal security controls and governance were a big concern that Metalogix was able to address. “It’s not very easy to govern the data that’s being entered into SharePoint. ControlPoint delivers automated functionality that we simply can’t get out-of-the-box – in the cloud or on-premises,” said Gullickson.
• Streamlined on-premises and cloud migrations – With its top-down view of SharePoint environments, Gullickson used ControlPoint to understand usage, clean up permissions and streamline the migration process. “Re-architecting our SharePoint environment as we move data to the cloud would have been impossible without ControlPoint.”
• Dependable support – Gullickson’s interaction with the Metalogix’ support team has been superior. “Working with Metalogix is a wonderful experience, when I do need something I get a response immediately. What impresses me most is the passion that everyone exhibits, they genuinely care. Even outside of service calls, I’ve had the opportunity to get a feel for where the products are heading it’s hugely exciting as an end user.”
• Enhanced productivity through training opportunities – Thanks to Metalogix Academy, an instructor-led, web-based training series and certification program, Gullickson is able to fill knowledge gaps: “The Academy was hugely beneficial in helping me get started with ControlPoint. It’s also opened my eyes to feature functionality that I haven’t had time to explore.”