Case Studies Global Leader in Marine Recreation Leverages Concurrency’s Digital Operations to Improve its Security Infrastructure and Employee Engagement

Global Leader in Marine Recreation Leverages Concurrency’s Digital Operations to Improve its Security Infrastructure and Employee Engagement

Bringing in Digital Operations to our Client

They needed a partner that could assess and advise on real-time events within its Microsoft E5 security solution as well as other areas of the IT infrastructure, in addition to providing hands-on support in keeping the environment thriving. After consulting with Concurrency on its security roadmap and a series of small projects, the organization engaged with Concurrency’s Digital Operations team to help implement a best-in-class security platform, provide proactive support, and ensure continued agility.

A leading global marine manufacturer is leading the charge in redefining, creating, and innovating the future of recreational boating.

For more than 150 years, a global marine manufacturer with operations in over 29 countries and thousands of employees, has been working to provide unmatched advanced design, technology, and innovation for its customers. With large operations comes the importance of protecting data, intellectual property, and employee security, especially as they gain further momentum by expanding its global reach. As they looked to renew their Microsoft E5 license, the organization knew it was not using E5 Security to its greatest potential. Microsoft E5 is a crucial security investment, and the organization wanted to ensure its environment was well maintained and efficient for its users, while remaining secure. E5 is a license providing advanced cloud-based tools for enterprises including the Office 365 suite, along with analytics, voice, and compliance capabilities.   

They needed a partner that could assess and advise on real-time events within its Microsoft E5 security solution as well as other areas of the IT infrastructure, in addition to providing hands-on support in keeping the environment thriving. After consulting with Concurrency on its security roadmap and a series of small projects, the organization engaged with Concurrency’s Digital Operations team to help implement a best-in-class security platform, provide proactive support, and ensure continued agility.

What is the Concurrency Digital Operations Team?

The Concurrency Digital Operations (DigiOps) team provides organizations with experienced, multi-disciplinary experts with a range of Microsoft certifications and expertise to ensure technology implementations are supported and maintained to maximize the organization’s ROI. The team provides ongoing support services, administration, and expert advice to properly support enterprise infrastructures and applications while leveraging the Microsoft partnership to ensure optimized performance and cost.

Bringing in Digital Operations to our Client

During the initiation of the program, Concurrency established a horizon plan with the client outlining a path to incrementally leverage the tools they already owned and could maximize within the Microsoft E5 license. The Operations team was contracted to be on-demand when they needed security assistance. Once a month, the horizon plan set up by Concurrency is revisited with the internal team to help the organization further move up the maturity curve and leverage off-premises and secure solutions. The Digital Operations team focused in on Azure Information Protection and brought to light the capabilities they could leverage while also continuing to evaluate and implement features of Microsoft E5. There are only certain policies that can be introduced into an IT infrastructure through E5, and DigiOps was able to show them: identity and access management, threat protection, advanced compliance, and information protection to name a few.

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Horizon plan detailed out

The organization had an established internal security team, but the make or break decision to bring in a third-party was made because the team needed true Microsoft expertise to maneuver E5 and more. Not only was it important to have the security team and Concurrency’s DigiOps working together effortlessly, but it was also important to get the security and IT teams from the client side to be on the same page.   

“We are a trusted group of people that are there when they need us,” Kurt Spitzner Director of Digital Operations said, “It’s not just a reactive support contract or roadmap that we give as a consultant then leave, we’re staying in touch and being proactive with their maturity curve and we’re there when they need a new perspective on something that’s challenging the security team.”

Customer Partnership

Concurrency’s work at the organization represents a long-term strategic partnership which has bridged periods of transitions that Concurrency has helped steward. The work has evolved from strategy to platform/security to digital transformation. The scope of the partnership has spanned strategic cloud adoption planning, early lift-and-shift migrations, security posture optimization as well as Application Innovation leadership to enable digital transformation.

“We did not have people who were cloud experts. There was a learning curve there and one of the things we did was to bring in third parties that would help us build that competency to sustain and optimize our consumption of cloud services. One of which was Concurrency, who did an outstanding job with us on the Azure side. From that, what we have been able to do is build a cloud engineering team that now manages the resources, templating, the software, automation, and monitoring of all our cloud assets. We now have a world-class cloud engineering and automation organization.” 

– CIO at Leading Marine Manufacturer 

Example of Digital Operations Efforts

One of the most noteworthy projects with DigiOps was the creation of surveys provided across multiple global offices through android tablets. As an advocate for the organization, DigiOps not only created an application for employees to fill out an engagement survey, but programed the surveys to be accessible to the Human Resources department with the touch of a button, from anywhere in the world. Over 160 tablets were sent to offices worldwide, prepped with the application and ready to be used when it was turned on. This project empowered the organization to continuously improve its manufacturing floors and workspaces for employees without disrupting its day-to-day operations.