Microsoft Office 365Customer Solution Case Study

Financial Solutions Company Prepares for Growth with Simpler and Centralized IT Management

OverviewCountry or Region: GlobalIndustry: Financial Services Technology

Customer ProfileFounded in 1994, Dion Global Solutions provides market leading software solutions to financial institutions worldwide in over 85 countries.

Business SituationWith multiple acquisitions, Dion inherited a disparate infrastructure and multiple mailing systems. To integrate these under one domain, it routed mails from individual servers across the organization. This was complex to manage and use.

SolutionDion migrated to cloud-based Microsoft Office 365 to integrate its business seamlessly and upgrade all its employees to a single mailing system.

Benefits Increased efficiency Consistency of email domain Single communication platform

“By moving to the cloud, we’re centralizing our email system, can now collaborate seamlessly across the globe and enjoy cutting-edge communication, while easing IT administration and reducing costs.”Dion Global Solutions is a global software company focused on international financial markets. Dion’s growth over recent years in different geographies has resulted in a heterogeneous IT environment with multiple domains and messaging systems. Dion decided to migrate to Microsoft Office 365, the cloud-based service to integrate its entire business, while reducing IT burdens and costs resulting from on-premise disparate systems. The new cloud-based solution eased communication and collaboration across the globe and brought all the employees under a single network, thus improving transparency. It is now easier and quicker to share information and coordinate meetings across the offices. This will also reduce travel and communication costs.

SituationFounded in 1994, Dion Global Solutions Limited (formerly Religare Technova Limited), provides software solutions and services to financial services institutions across the globe. Its solutions include investment, retail and commercial banking, institutional trading and investment, and private client wealth management and stock broking. With over 600 employees, Dion serves more than 550 customers in 85countries across Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, India, Africa and the Middle East.

Dion has expanded its business through a number of acquisitions and strategic partnerships. It acquired UK based Investmaster in 2011 and Swissrisk Financial Systems GmbH in 2012. Dion also partners with Mahindra Satyam, who invested in the organisation in 2012. 

With these acquisitions, Dion inherited a heterogeneous infrastructure and silo-driven business. As each company was using different messaging platforms, Dion was managing multiple domains, running MS-Exchange servers as well as Zimbra servers. To bring all the domains and mail servers under the Dion umbrella, it created a stopgap process that routes the emails from different servers and domains to its own servers.

SolutionGaurav Kohli, Development Director at Dion believed that a single

integrated platform was essential for the organisation and for easy communication. He felt that a cloud-based solution would allow Dion to assimilate all the acquisitions and support future growth. “The IT team should not spend its time worrying about the infrastructure, IP links and network and server availability. Therefore, a cloud-based solution was the obvious choice,” he comments.

With this vision, the IT team began exploring various options available in the market. They decided to deploy Office 365 because of the simple change, and easier acceptance of the Microsoft solution among the employees. “We wanted to upgrade technology rather than forcing changes on our people. Also, the technical support and training from Microsoft were added advantages,” says Tanveer Hafeez, Head, UK Technical Services, Dion Global.

Implementation was planned in phases, as it required consolidation of four different mail servers spread across the globe to a single one.

As a Microsoft partner, the company possesses a large number of Microsoft Office and SharePoint licenses. To use these effectively, Dion procured a mix of E1 and E3 plans.

Dion decided on a hybrid environment using the flexibility of Office 365 and interoperability between Exchange Online and Lync Online, on-premises Exchange Server and Office 365 tools on the desktop.

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“In the Office 365 deployment, the change was minimal and easily accepted by our employees. The teams are integrating quickly and seamlessly.”Tanveer Hafeez, Head, UK Technical

Services, Dion Global Solutions

In the first phase, Dion implemented Lync for all employees. Overcoming the initial teething problems, Lync was successfully deployed for users in the United Kingdom, followed by India, Germany, Asia-Pacific region, USA, Canada and Australia.

For SharePoint Online and Outlook Online, Dion started with a pilot that included IT team members across the business to create awareness about the changes in technology within the organisation. It gradually upgraded the mail servers to migrate the user mailboxes to Exchange Online. To avoid a steep learning curve for its employees and enable effective use of the new technology, the migration was gradual.

Germany has stringent data protection laws and hence it will follow a hybrid model path where mail servers for the country will reside at the data centers in Germany and federate with Dion Office 365 cloud.

In all, there will be over 600 users of Office 365 and Lync. Dion aims to merge all the servers to Exchange Online, and have all its users fully on board by September 2013.

Benefits“We believe upgrading technology and consolidating all mailboxes on Office 365 is a smart move,” says Gaurav Kohli, Development Director, Dion Global. “It has been widely

accepted by the Dion Management, the IT teams and employees.”

Increased EfficiencyDion initially had two domains for its 300─400 employees. The new acquisitions added another 300 users and created a more heterogeneous IT environment. Dion needed to streamline its IT infrastructure and allow its employees the ability to easily communicate and share information.

Consistency of Email DomainBrand consistency is crucial to Dion and Office 365 allows the firm to centralize its email system and create a single unified vision of the company for both, internal and external stakeholders.

Single Communication PlatformWith Lync Online, employees can check the availability of their colleagues across the globe for meetings, thus making communication easier and quicker. “Earlier, we were never sure who would be available across the offices and whether they were traveling internationally,” states Gaurav Kohli, Dion Global. “Availability status on Lync takes care of that. We can find each other quickly and instantly click to communicate in real time. Lync’s support on all smart phones, whether it is iOS, Windows, Blackberry, or Android further eases communication.”

Reduced Costs and Time Saving

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"We hope to see a reduction in travel costs because of better collaboration with Lync audio and video conferencing. Meanwhile, we are also seeing a reduction in our communication costs.”

Earlier, the complex infrastructure was increasing management and resources costs. However, with on-cloud services, the infrastructure is simpler and seamlessly integrated. This saves a significant amount of time spent on IT management. “We hope to see a reduction in travel costs because of better collaboration with Lync audio and video conferencing. Meanwhile, we are also seeing a reduction in our communication costs,” states Keith Bold, Finance Director, Dion Global.

“In future, we plan to use audio and video conferencing from a single platform, and explore all the web capabilities using Office 365 tools. Moreover, we can evolve and federate the solution outside to communicate more effectively with partners and customers,” Gaurav concludes.

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Microsoft Office 365Microsoft Office 365 brings together cloud versions of our most trusted communications and collaboration products—Microsoft SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online—with the latest version of our Office desktop suite and companion web applications for businesses of all sizes.

Office 365 helps save time and money, and it frees up valued resources. Simple to use and easy to administer, it is financially backed by a service level agreement guaranteeing 99 percent reliability. Office 365 features robust security, IT-level phone support, geo-redundancy, disaster recovery, and the business-class privacy controls and standards that you expect from a world-class service provider.

For more information about Microsoft Office 365, go to:www.office365.com

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Dion Global products and services, visit the website at: www.dionglobal.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published June 2013

Software and Services Microsoft Office 365

− Microsoft Exchange Online− Microsoft SharePoint Online− Microsoft Lync Online