Azaleos Managed Hybrid Services (MHS) for Microsoft Office 365

Azaleos’ Managed Hybrid Services (MHS) version 2.0 blends our remotely managed private cloud service set with Microsoft Office 365. With MHS, choosing between the private and the public cloud is no longer an ‘either/or’ proposition. Organizations can select private cloud/on-premise or public cloud-based email & collaboration services based on the roles and responsibilities or regulatory requirements of individual employees, workgroups, departments, subsidiaries, and more. Azaleos experts provide deployment, migration, and configuration support for private cloud applications and the Office 365-based Exchange public cloud offering.
View Our Managed Hybrid Services Datasheet

While hybrid architectures that mix on-premise email with public cloud-based filtering, archiving, and business continuity have been successfully implemented for some time now, spreading mailboxes across private cloud/on-premise and public cloud infrastructures is a new and untested concept. There are three key concerns facing organizations that want to pilot or move some percentage of their users to Office 365:

Complex network and infrastructure set-up and configuration
Potential single point of failure for Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS)
Unified management for private cloud/on-premise and public cloud infrastructures

Virtually every organization has a mix of users – desk-based, mobile, tele-workers – each with different requirements, including some that are bound by regulatory compliance mandates. One of the biggest challenges for today’s CIO is giving users the tools that meet these needs while simultaneously reducing the cost and time necessary to maintain these services. Azaleos Managed Hybrid Services v2.0 meets this challenge, allowing organizations to match individual users with the appropriate email services they require to be productive and to create a “rich co-existence” scenario between private cloud/on-premise and Office 365 public cloud users.

Azaleos provides configuration, deployment, and migration support for both private cloud/on-premise Exchange 2010 and cloud-based Exchange Online offerings, as well as a host of communications and synchronization services between the two services using the Exchange Coexistence Server, ADFS 2.0 and the Microsoft Federation Gateway. Technicians in two Azaleos Network Operations Centers (NOCs) use patented technology to remotely monitor and manage private cloud servers while experts in Microsoft datacenters maintain SLAs for the Office 365 applications. Using MHS IT can create an “insurance policy” by carefully assessing the “hidden” impacts like the network impact of running users in the public cloud, latency changes and, most importantly, user experience with Office 365 before making the decision to go “all in”.

The following service models are an example of how our Managed Hybrid Services enable organizations to truly optimize their email, collaboration and unified communications service delivery:

Office 365 Trial: Office 365 for trial users and Private Cloud/On-Premise for all others.
Split-Worker: Private Cloud/On-Premise for Knowledge Workers and Office 365 for Deskless Workers.
Acquisition: Private Cloud/On-Premise for core company and Office 365 for the company being acquired.
Slow Transition & Large-Scale Migrations: Private Cloud/On-Premise for core company and gradual progression to Office 365 for departments doing POCs and/or pilots.
Security & Regulatory: Private Cloud/On-Premise for departments/subsidiaries with stringent security and/or regulatory requirements and Office 365 for all others.
Branch Office: Branch Office moves to Office 365 to minimize high local IT management costs while HQ stays Private Cloud/On-Premise.
External Contractors: Contractor moves to Office 365 to remove the need for high priced Exchange external contractors. All others remain Private Cloud/On-Premise.
Geography: Private Cloud/On-Premise for subsidiaries who struggle with network bandwidth connecting back to the single Microsoft datacenter and Office 365 for all others.
Executive Concierge: Private Cloud/On-Premise for key executives to ensure rapid problem resolution and Office 365 for all others.
Application Integration: Private Cloud/On-Premise for departments requiring unique LOB-application integration and Office 365 for all others.
Missing Features: Private Cloud/On-Premise for departments requiring all 2010 Wave features NOT in Office 365 (e.g. Exchange Public Folders) and Office 365 for all others.
Split SharePoint: Office 365 for simple SP app users. Private Cloud/On-Premise for complex/customized SP LOB app users.
Split Lync: Private Cloud/On-Premise for all Lync Servers to achieve enterprise voice and Office 365 for all SP & Exchange users.

Office 365, ADFS 2.0 and MHS 2.0
As an add-on part of MHS 2.0, Azaleos can help to set-up and configure ADFS 2.0 in conjunction with a current AD forest so as to enable true single sign-on to domain joined computers. Users will be able to use AD credentials to access all Office 365 services.
Utilizing ADFS allows IT to enforce the organization’s password policies in both private cloud/on-premises and Office 365 systems and increases security of AD credentials since passwords are never synced to the public cloud. MHS 2.0 includes 24x7 monitoring & management of ADFS 2.0* and can be extended to also include full ADFS professional services relating to Capacity, Namespace & Certificate Planning/Alignment and Office 365 integration.
*For Office 365 only environments, the Azaleos Managed AD Service (sold seperately) can monitor & manage AD (including ADFS) to protect the Office 365 infrastructure.

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