Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) is a suite of various apps designed to help individuals and organisations work effectively and efficiently. We have helped many clients deploy M365 across their organisations to enable users and maximise their productivity.

These projects have led us to work on all the different admin centre services hosted by Microsoft:

Security

Compliance

Teams

Exchange

SharePoint

Microsoft Defender ATP

Endpoint Manager

Azure Active Directory

Power Apps

Power Automate

We have implemented many identity solutions that are either B2B (business-to-business) or B2C (business-to-consumer). An identity provider creates, maintains, and manages identity information while providing authentication services to applications. This means users who already have an account from an integrated provider can automatically sign in. This includes but not limited to the following authentication protocols and/or identity providers:

Active Directory (AD)

Azure Active Directory (AAD)

Azure Active Directory B2C (AAD B2C)

AWS Cognito

Google Identity

Facebook

GitHub

Microsoft

Email

Auth0

SAML

WS-FED

OAuth

OpenID

LDAP

Kerberos

As mentioned above, this list is not the limit as there are many more identity providers to mention that exist and can be integrated. If a provider is not listed above, contact us and we would be happy to help integrate them for you.

Digital transformation is the process of using digital technologies to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements. This reimagining of business in the digital age is digital transformation.

Examples of projects that have enabled us to Digitally Transform include the following:

Introduce risk assessment solution for user authentication to prevent high-score logins

Create an automated runbook to identify and prevent a lost or stolen asset

Integrate Functions with user authentication to include custom claims and authorise based on claim values

Convert manual certificate rotation to an Automated Certificate Management Environment (also known as ACME)

Introduce IaC tools for accelerated infrastructure deployments

Convert physical hardware to software driven applications

An organisations security posture is its readiness and ability to identify, respond and recover from security threats and risks. The controls and processes you have in place to protect yourself from cyber-attacks is key and some examples we have implemented are:

Risk Assessment

Encryption

Authentication

Authorisation

Multi-factor authentication (MFA)

SonarQube

Checkmarxx

Penetration Testing

Log Shipping

The Zero Trust model assumes breach and verifies everything as though it originates from an open and/or unsecure network. By default we must never trust and always verify.

When working on branding or the design of interfaces, it can be very challenging to create a visual representation of a product or service to engage with consumers. There are many variables to be considered and factored in to ensure the highest reach.

We have successfully designed and delivered to clients with various requirements:

Architecture

Logos

Branding

Animation

Illustration

Typography

Videography

Graphic Design

Augmented Reality (.fbx)

Mobile and Web Applications

Our team are also native Architects who can design bespoke infrastructure and applications, or microservices hosted in the Cloud or on-premise.

Defining Cloud Gates for organisations varies on what you wish to achieve before, during and after a service goes live. However some common trends occur across all organisations which is to ensure the following gates are implemented and captured to provide reliability, agility and insight:

Source Code

Secrets

Review

Testing

Artifacts

Security Scanning

Automation

Monitoring

Logging

Alerting

Documentation

There are many different tools that can be used to implement and observe the gates mentioned above. However, once all gates are defined based on the requirements, then it provides a rich holistic view to manage all services.

Through various workstreams to automate manual business processes, tasks and even infrastructure platforms, we have managed to successfully accomplish this by decoupling the end to end process and scripting each component. Then ensure that with the use of runbooks we can execute each one in order or parallel to achieve the result our clients were in need of.

One of our biggest achievements was automating an entire Active Directory Domain Services from the ground up. With the use of the right DevOps aligned tools and programming languages we were able to complete this project. Once this was complete then it is only as little as 1 line of code to scale the solution and integrate additional Domain Controllers.

In another project we were given the requirements to deliver an automated Cisco firewall solution. This would include the build and setup end-to-end so that we have 2 identical firewalls in an active-active high availability pair. Once this was finished, engineers in BAU would only have to update CSV or JSON files to manage the Cisco firewall pair.

Amongst many more projects we have automated processes end-to-end from infrastructure to hardware to software and business process.

DevOps is a new way of thinking and working to bring Development and Operations together to follow a set of patterns and practices and unite people, process, and technology in application planning, development, delivery, and operations.

We ourselves apply the DevOps way to our way of working. But more importantly we have assisted organisations go through a transformation to define their meaning of DevOps and the roadmap that comes with it.

Plan

Develop

Deliver

Operate

The infrastructure-as-code (Iac) tool Terraform has rapidly become the industry open-source choice for declaring all resources in code. Terraform helps users and/or organisations define and accelerate the required infrastructure across all major cloud providers such as AWS, Azure and Google.

We have used Terraform extensively in all technically driven projects to deploy various infrastructure:

Setup Virtual Networks with subnets and peerings (including Hub and Spoke design)

Build Compute services

Deploy Storage to host data

Setup Gateways for ingress/egress

Create APIs

Content Delivery Networks

Implement Functions for lightweight serverless architecture

Web Apps

Automation to host runbooks

A lot of organisations have observed the benefit of migrating to the cloud, versus traditional on-premise architecture and monolithic applications. We have helped many to date to convert and transition to the cloud to unlock the full potential of cloud.

Install COTS applications

Setup applications to be agnostically deployed to multi-cloud providers

Convert on-premise hardware to software driven products

Backup servers to the cloud

Configure VPNs between on-premise and the cloud

Azure AD Connect

Azure Arc

Setup core and edge Firewalls hosted in the cloud

Replicate environments and create Greenfield environments

Business continuity is about having a plan to deal with difficult situations, so that an organisation can continue to function with as little disruption as possible. That is where we have come in previously to help support the continuity of businesses by carrying out BAU tasks for the Development and Operations teams.

Host presentations on various topics

Provide training to increase awareness and upskill

High availability

Disaster Recovery

Backups

Custom reports

Mobile device management

Setup and monitor LAN and WAN primary and secondary sites

Migrate VPN solution to always-on

Failing To Prepare, Is Preparing To Fail.

Creating a Greenfield environment is a moment of setting the standard, so that when integrating new applications and infrastructure you can do it with the least amount of effort required.

We have followed the Cloud Adpotion Framework which helps achieve the common goal of best practices, documentation and tools that help create and implement business and technology strategies for the cloud.

During Greenfield environment projects we have been engaged in, we have managed to automate most or if not all areas, as well as placing everything in source control, such as Git.

Creating these environments give assurance to the stakeholders that they will all be stabilised as we are able to define the build and release stages from the beginning of their lifecycle.