BDO digital was recently selected by Microsoft to host their annual Technology Roadmap Event at their Midwest District Headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana. The event was a huge success and we had a great turnout and engaging audience. Nearly 50 IT leaders joined us to hear Microsoft’s vision around productivity with Office 365, data insights with Power BI, the Azure Cloud and the road to Windows 10.

For those of you who couldn’t join us, you can download a copy of our Microsoft Indiana Roadmap event slides here.

One of the highlights of the event was hearing from two of our Indiana customers, T2 Systems out of Indianapolis and Ash Brokerage out of Fort Wayne speak about their decision to move to the Microsoft cloud. Here is a recap:

T2 Systems Talks Microsoft Office 365

Jim Hutchins, CIO and EVP of IT and Grant Dawson, Director of IT at T2 Systems spoke about their decision to move to Microsoft’s Office 365 stack and their experience leveraging Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Office 365 Apps. The move to Office 365 solved a business challenge, enabling them to be more flexible for Mergers and Acquisitions and freed up T2 Systems’ core team so that they could be dedicated to their customers rather than their infrastructure. One of the important points brought up by Jim was around user adoption and communication. This was key to get user buy in and champions in each department were designated to ensure successful adoption of the new technology. Jim mentioned that as they move forward with future acquisitions, he will emphasize the importance of user adoption and communication even more (a key differentiator for BDO Digital when it comes to Office 365). When we asked Grant what new technology in Office 365 he will deploy next, Grant responded enthusiastically with Skype for Business. Grant feels that Skype for Business will not only enrich productivity for his end users, but will also provide tremendous cost savings by replacing their existing conference, web hosting, IM/presence and voice platforms.

Ash Brokerage Talks Microsoft Azure

David Threm, CIO at Ash Brokerage spoke about the decision to integrate Microsoft Azure into their infrastructure. Ash Brokerage is currently constructing a new office building with plans to move in 2016. Rather than investing in a huge amount of capital for infrastructure such as storage, David has invested in Microsoft Azure to support the transition. Additionally, David brought up that Azure security and Disaster Recovery was something that he couldn’t hire for and he appreciates Microsoft’s emphasis on data security and redundancy. Microsoft Azure has provided David with an environment where his app developers could quickly test and build applications without burden to his already operationally consumed infrastructure team. In the past, this could cause delays to ongoing infrastructure and development projects or create additional infrastructure spend for hardware and licensing for building applications. With Microsoft Azure, David’s developers can quickly build an app on Azure and deploy services to their customers.

Attendees also learned how to mobilize their workforce with Windows 10, increase business productivity with Office 365, make better decisions with their data using Microsoft business intelligence solutions, and save time and money by extending their infrastructure to the Azure cloud. Thanks to everyone who attended made this event such a success.