Dallas Stars Case Study

As the 1999 Stanley Cup winner, the Dallas Stars is aggressively focused on achieving domination on the ice. Off the ice, the Dallas Stars was looking for a strategic partner to make its email infrastructure more collaborative and its security system more resilient for its more than 400 employees nationwide.

CHALLENGE

The Dallas Stars IT Division wanted to upgrade the company’s Exchange 2003 environment to a Microsoft Exchange Online solution for more than 400 users, desktops and hand-held devices. Because Office 365 was new to the market and its IT Division lacked dedicated resources with cloud technologies, the Dallas Stars needed:

•  A strategic, virtual technology partner with cloud technology expertise
•  Speed of delivery due to budget constraints and an aggressive timeline
•  A stable, robust environment with little oversight so the company could focus on long-term business initiatives

SOLUTION

Sparkhound, a Microsoft Cloud Accelerate Partner with years of migration experience and methodology best practices, delivered a seamless, customized migration experience:

• Implemented a Project Management phased approach with collaborative project planning and mapping sessions
• Configured an Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) environment and Exchange
• Migration to hundreds of users and devices
• Developed a post-migration support strategy and end-user training on desktop configuration and mobile device configuration

IMPACT

By upgrading to an Exchange Online solution based on Microsoft’s Office 365 platform, the Dallas Stars lowered administrative overhead costs, reduced multiple license costs, increased uptime for email availability and optimized security with Microsoft’s cloud environment.