About The Client

A leading US-based apparel retailer with approximately 150 outlets and a strong omnichannel footprint across online and physical stores. It specializes in its own niche brand and other brands. They had an in-house Data Centre, and Saksoft worked with them to identify areas of IT optimization, develop cloud plans, and then migrate.

Business Challenge

  • Existing on-premises Exchange 2010 environment had critical performance and stability issues — impacting hundreds of users across the organization 

  • Detailed architecture was not available, support was not available, OPEX and CAPEX costs were high 

  • There was no DR — moreover the Exchange 2010 environment was approaching end of life in 2020 

  • Approximately 475 users were hosted with on-premises AD sync — user mailboxes and critical backups were not managed properly 

  • Data Center infrastructure and operations were not stabilized — with mounting OPEX and CAPEX concerns and no concrete IT or cloud roadmap 

  • Lacked end-to-end architecture information and documentation about interdependencies between applications, infrastructure, and business 

  • Indefinite delays in implementing changes, ever-increasing CAPEX and OPEX and IT productivity issues 

  • No details were available about the technology stack and no clear roadmap on how IT could augment the business 

What did we do?

  • Performed a detailed discovery and assessment of IT and business across the entire data center environment 

  • Proposed Microsoft 365 Exchange Online solution — designed the solution architecture and migration plan 

  • Identified IT optimization opportunities across applications, infrastructure, and CAPEX/OPEX 

  • Hybrid migration solution was proposed — business criticality and environment stability considered at every stage 

  • Developed a detailed roadmap of cloud adoption on Azure, and Microsoft 365 using their advanced services. Proposed several business cases with cost benefits along with possible technology solutions 

  • Proposed AD integration with Microsoft 365 via Azure AD Connect and SSO capability for 475 users 

  • IT Cloud Blueprint developed by Saksoft is now used as the baseline architecture document 

  • Provided IT consulting and security recommendations to strengthen the client’s infrastructure and align with PCI DSS audit requirements.  

  • Designed and enabled air-gapped, immutable backup protection to enhance data security, ransomware resilience, and business continuity.  

  • Introduced an enterprise-grade archive storage tier for backup data, optimizing long-term backup retention and significantly reducing storage costs. This initiative delivered an estimated annual cost savings of USD 30K–40K while maintaining required security, compliance, and data-retention standards. 

Business Outcome

  • Achieved 25–35% savings in IT infrastructure costs, delivered entirely offshore 

  • Migrated in 8 weeks with zero disruption across all 150 stores 

  • Streamlined 20 apps to 8; consolidated 50+ on-prem instances into 25 across AWS, Azure, and Microsoft 365 

  • Designed AWS advanced services (S3, RDS, FSx) with built-in HA/DR

  • Phase 1 of the Microsoft 365 rollout completed as part of a well-received phased strategy 

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