Introduction
Project dependencies are a significant challenge when working to achieve both corporate and technology objectives. This challenge of project dependencies was faced by our client, a large regional bank in the US. Its primary objectives, including reducing operating costs, were being held back because of the time-consuming and resource-intensive technical realities of the initiative, especially in relation to application management. Automation was the solution.
This case study demonstrates how the right automation technologies backed by industry-leading expertise facilitates the delivery of corporate priorities and objectives.
The Project
Our client faced significant pressure to:
- Reduce operating costs
- Modernise its technology stack
To achieve these objectives, the company decided to accelerate the migration of its users to AVD and Windows 365 cloud desktops. This involved migrating a significant proportion of users from physical devices and on-premises VDI to Azure. The plan also involved migrating endpoint management from SCCM to Intune.
This would, in turn, enable a review of the existing on-premises SCCM infrastructure. A key aim of this review was to reduce the number of on-premises SCCM servers, substantially reducing hardware, licensing, and management costs, contributing to the project’s overall objectives. Data centre storage space would also be freed up as a result.
The Application Management Challenge
Applications were the challenge. The application estate consisted of over 1,200 applications. Taking into account the company’s lean IT team and day-to-day workload, it was estimated that it would take around nine months to manually migrate the 1,200+ applications to a modern format ready for the cloud desktop and Intune migration.
This meant the application migration element of the project would set back the bank’s key objectives by up to 12 months, including the objective of reducing operating costs.
Our client assessed the market to identify a solution that would automate the process of migrating applications to a modern format.
Access IT Automation and our product, Access Capture, were selected as the solution to help achieve the following project objectives:
- Expedite the migration to Microsoft Azure-based cloud desktops and Intune endpoint management
- Update the application estate to modern packaging formats
- Automate application packaging, testing, and deployment
- Optimise the efficiency of the small IT team and reduce the manual workload
- Maximise return on investment with minimal disruption
David Butler-McAllister, Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer at Access IT Automation, said:
“The client selected Access Capture for this project for a range of reasons, including the flexible deployment options, which can be on-premises or in the cloud. We were also able to demonstrate the expertise of our team and our track record for strong customer engagement, and we delivered the highest projected ROI among the evaluated solutions.”
What We Did
Our team deployed the Access Capture platform across both on-premises infrastructure and Azure. We provided training and support to ensure smooth onboarding and help the internal IT team become self-sufficient in the use of Access Capture.
Within days, the team was using Access Capture’s automation functionality to migrate the applications in the estate to a modern format.
A crucial part of this process was to review all 1,200+ applications for their suitability to the company’s preferred application packaging format, MSIX. A plan was also established to repackage those applications not suitable for the MSIX format.
The Results
- 1,276 applications, mostly EXEs and MSIs, were processed through the Access Capture platform.
- Access Capture automated the packaging of 641 applications to the MSIX format, before automating testing and publishing to Intune.
- Access Capture also automated the packaging and testing of another 635 MSI applications into the IntuneWin32 deployment format for Intune consumption.
- Access Capture saved approximately nine months on the operational readiness of the application estate for the cloud migration.
- The overall cloud desktop migration project was accelerated by 12 months as a result.
- On-premises infrastructure was significantly reduced, resulting in combined hardware, licensing, and operational resource savings of approximately $1.4m a year.
- Access Capture is now embedded into the bank’s Business-as-Usual (BAU) operational model for application updates, testing, and publishing to ensure always-current and always-compliant applications are added to Intune.
Analysis
Access IT Automation’s David Butler-McAllister said:
“Access IT Automation’s Access Capture product enabled the bank to modernise its application delivery at scale, despite limited internal resources. By simplifying and automating the entire migration lifecycle, the bank not only achieved substantial cost and time savings but also positioned itself for long-term agility and scalability in the cloud.”
The bank’s CIO said:
“Access Capture is now a core component of our ongoing application lifecycle management. We got all this automation for essentially the cost of employing an engineer.”
