Powering always-on email with Office 365 at Karen Millen
Karen Millen Business Drivers
Karen Millen was keen to improve end user productivity and provide a more reliable and flexible email platform that included fit for purpose mailboxes for all employees. “We were using an aging email system – MS Exchange 2003 – which we shared with the other three brands,” explains Richard Haverly, Project Manager, Infrastructure and Technical, at Karen Millen. “Managing around 2,000 mailboxes, we were struggling with mailbox sizes and many users were getting frustrated with their mailboxes constantly becoming full very quickly.”
Trustmarque Solution
Trustmarque initially conducted several discovery workshops with key stakeholders within Karen Millen. These sessions focussed on the technical and commercial options available for a new email platform and the associated benefits. The result of these workshops was a recommendations paper and solution design for a new Active Directory Domain and Exchange Online Solution. Subscriptions for the new solution were to be procured through Microsoft’s Cloud Solution Provider program to ensure a truly consumption based commercial model was adopted.
With support from Trustmarque, Karen Millen has adopted an independent Active Directory domain and Exchange Online implementation. Within 3 months, Karen Millen’s 250+ head office users were migrated from Exchange 2003 to Microsoft Office 365. Every employee now has access to an enterprise size mailbox at 50 GB with the ability to upgrade to unlimited data if necessary. Haverly continues: “Remote users can also access their mailboxes without the need for a VPN and we plan to roll out webmail to our 250 stores across 65 countries in the near future.”
Business Benefits
With a new Active Directory domain and Exchange in the cloud, Karen Millen can enjoy a number of benefits:
- Business continuity for all business mail
- Flexible remote working
- Increased productivity
- More robust system
- Better functionality
- Improved security
About Karen Millen
Established in 1981, Karen Millen is a London-based International fashion house with stores in over 61 countries across six continents. The company is UK born and bred, with over 60% of sales coming from international markets; through standalone stores in fashion and cultural capitals, including London, LA, New York, Paris, Moscow, Dubai, Hong Kong, as well as partnerships with iconic retailers such as Selfridges, Harrods, Bloomingdales, Galeries Lafayette and El Corte Ingles.
“Working with Trustmarque was a totally different experience, the collaboration and openness between the two parties was key to the project success.”
Pratibha Kini, IT and Business Development Director at Karen Millen
Why Trustmarque?
After reviewing several companies, Karen Millen was confident that Trustmarque could deliver. Concludes Richard: “Trustmarque has a large, experienced professional services team and an excellent understanding and approach to Office 365. The transition phase was seamless with minimal disruption to our day-to-day business. The people are flexible, open and it felt like we were with a safe pair of hands from start to finish. We look forward to rolling out more Office 365 functionality and features over the coming months.”
