Case Study – Brooke Air
Brooke Air: From an Ageing Server
About the client
Brooke Air designs and manufactures grilles, diffusers, louvres and plenums for UK HVAC projects, with technical support from specification through to site. For over 55 years the business has combined craftsmanship, innovation and precision engineering to create air distribution solutions.
Its products are specified across commercial buildings, data centres, healthcare, industrial and manufacturing, defence and marine projects, where architectural quality and dependable performance both matter.
The challenge
Brooke Air was running its business systems on a single on-premise server that had reached the end of its life, at the same time as planning an office move and supporting people working from more than one location.
An ageing server and legacy operating system
The customer had a server with a legacy operating system and hardware which was due for replacement.
Downtime and replacement costs
With greater risk of the hardware failing this would result in downtime for the business and significant costs for a replacement.
Security and modernisation for growth
The organisation also wanted to improve security and modernise its IT environment to support future growth.
An office move and distributed users
An office move was also being planned and users are often working from different locations, making it harder to access server resources.
Brooke Air needed a way off the ageing hardware that would improve security at the same time, without tying critical business systems to one building.
Sprint Integration’s solution
Sprint Integration delivered a full server migration from an on-premise server with an Active Directory domain to Entra joined devices, with data migration to SharePoint.
1
Requirements and discovery
This involved speaking to the customer to gather requirements, reviewing existing server infrastructure to determine what software and data need to be transferred, identified applications and dependencies then work out the optimal way for the migration to a cloud environment.
2
Server migration to the cloud
Full server migration from on premise server with active directory domain to Entra joined devices, with data migration to SharePoint.
3
Device management and access control
Devices were Entra joined to enable central management and conditional access policies were employed to ensure enrolled devices and user authentication were compliant with modern security standards.
OneDrive policies were deployed to ensure that existing user profiles were retained and key folders were synced with the cloud for data continuity.
4
A layer of additional security tooling
In addition we also deployed a suite of tools to further enhanced security within the customer’s environment including:
- Patch management
- A dedicated e-mail security platform
- Security alerting for suspicious activity
- Phishing simulations to measure staff awareness
5
Communication throughout the project
During the project we updated the customer at regular intervals on progress and communicated timelines and outstanding tasks for the project.
Results
Secure, simpler sign-in
Single sign on with modern Multifactor authentication methods ensured access was secure and easier for users and simplified document sharing and version control to ensure an enhanced user experience.
Central device management
Devices were Entra joined to enable central management and conditional access policies were employed to ensure enrolled devices and user authentication were compliant with modern security standards.
Data continuity
OneDrive policies were deployed to ensure that existing user profiles were retained and key folders were synced with the cloud for data continuity.
Business continuity
Having a cloud management platform for devices and data increased business continuity to ensure less reliance on a user being in a single location and physical hardware for high availability of critical business systems.
