In the summer of 2023, the company's Russian branch encountered a significant issue: due to geopolitical circumstances, the headquarters decided to cut the local division off from the global IT infrastructure upon exiting the Russian market.
Thus, the Russian branch set itself goal: to build its own turnkey infrastructure from scratch. However, at that point, the company had no clear timeline or plans for the final transition. ICL Services was brought in to tackle this complex and all-encompassing task.
Key Challenges
- Build an IT infrastructure from scratch after a split from the parent company
Implemented our solution
The project's active phase kicked off in December, following the decision to build an IT infrastructure from scratch and create new Active Directory domains.
The project's complexity escalated in December, when news arrived that the disconnection from the headquarters was just a week away. The initial plans for prepping user machines and installing operating systems and the necessary software on those machines turned out to be unfeasible. The company also decided not to transition to a Russian Linux-based OS at this stage, hence it needed a tool to manage the workstation fleet in place of the departing Microsoft products.
For this purpose, our team suggested Colibri-ARM, a proprietary solution by ICL Services, which aids with managing the IT infrastructure in a heterogeneous environment and serves as a Russian alternative to Microsoft's SCCM.
In a tight time frame, we deployed the new infrastructure and three Active Directory domains simultaneously across three locations. Users were switched from the old to new domain, and the required application packages were installed using Group Policy.
The new mail and collaboration services were based on Yandex 360, which necessitated the installation of additional applications: Yandex.Telebridge, Yandex.Disk, and Yandex.Messenger. Collaboration between different domains within the same organization presented challenges, which the company delegated to third-party vendors. Currently, we are collaborating with Yandex to address this.
There is still a lot of work to do before the end of February, involving the use of Colibri-ARM for infrastructure management. At present, we have installed an agent at all workstations, are carrying out an inventory of the existing workstation fleet, and collecting data from computers where software needs to be installed. During the solution's trial phase, our experts have full control over the processes and promptly address any issues as they arise. Going forward, the process of installing and updating applications will be simplified, thanks to a dynamic inventory that allows the user to track the infrastructure's condition in real time and see installation statuses on pre-configured charts.
Given the distributed nature of the client's infrastructure, being able to connect to users remotely is crucial for this project. This feature has also been implemented through Colibri-ARM. The integrated remote session module allows for quick connection and helps promptly resolve 2nd and 3rd line support incidents.
In addition to facilitating the migration of ARMs to the new infrastructure, the use of Colibri-ARM also automated ARM management processes. The client now enjoys access to up-to-date ARM inventory information, automatic software deployment on user computers, and the remote support connection.
Products and technologies
- Colibri-UEM
- Active Directory
- Yandex 360
Results
- In 3 months, we have built an all-new IT infrastructure on 300 workstations across 3 sites and 3 Active Directory domains.
- Implemented Colibri-UEM as an infrastructure management tool for workstations
- The customer got remote connections to user sessions
- Fully successful transition to Yandex 360 business services