Contoso IT infrastructure and business needs

Contoso is transitioning from an on-premises, centralized IT infrastructure to a cloud-inclusive setup that incorporates cloud-based personal productivity workloads and applications.

Existing Contoso IT infrastructure

Contoso uses a mostly centralized on-premises IT infrastructure, with application datacenters in the Paris headquarters.

Here's the headquarters office with application datacenters, a DMZ, and the internet.

Existing Contoso IT infrastructure.

The on-premises application datacenters host:

  • Custom line-of-business applications that use SQL Server and other Linux databases.
  • A set of legacy SharePoint servers.
  • Organization and team-level servers for file storage.

Additionally, each regional hub office supports a set of servers with a similar set of applications. These servers are under the control of regional IT departments.

Searchability across the applications and data of these separate multi-geographical datacenters continues to be a challenge.

In the Contoso headquarters DMZ, different sets of servers provide:

  • Hosting for the Contoso public web site, from which customers can order products, parts, supplies, and service.
  • Hosting for the Contoso partner extranet for partner communication and collaboration.
  • Virtual private network (VPN)-based remote access to the Contoso intranet and web proxying for workers in the Paris headquarters.

Contoso business needs

Contoso business needs fall into five main categories:

Productivity

  • Make collaboration easier

    Replace email and file share-based collaboration with an online model that allows real-time changes on documents, easier online meetings, and captured conversation threads.

  • Improve productivity for remote and mobile workers

    With many employees working from home or in the field, replace the bottlenecked VPN solution with performant access to Contoso data and resources in the cloud.

  • Increase creativity and innovation

    Take advantage of the latest visual learning and idea development methods, including inking and 3D visualization.

Security

  • Identity and access management

    Enforce multifactor and other forms of authentication and protect user and administrator account credentials.

  • Threat protection

    Protect against external security threats, including email and operating system-based malware.

  • Information protection

    Lock down access to and encrypt high-value digital assets, such as customer data, design and manufacturing specifications, and employee information.

  • Security management

    Monitor security posture and detect and respond to threats in real time.

Remote and mobile access and business partners

  • Improve security for remote and mobile workers

    Implement bring your own device (BYOD) and company-owned device management to ensure secured access, correct application behavior, and company data protection.

  • Reduce remote access infrastructure for employees

    Reduce maintenance and support costs and improve performance for remote access solution by moving commonly accessed resources to the cloud.

  • Provide better connectivity and lower overhead for business-to-business (B2B) transactions

    Replace an aging and expensive partner extranet with a cloud-based solution that uses federated authentication.

Compliance

  • Adhere to regional regulatory requirements

    Ensure compliance with industry and regional regulations for data storage, encryption, data privacy, and personal data regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for the Europe Union.

Management

  • Lower IT overhead for managing software running on client PCs and devices

    Automate installation of updates to the Windows operating system and Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise across the organization.

Mapping Contoso business needs to Microsoft 365 for enterprise

The Contoso IT department determined the following mapping of business needs to Microsoft 365 E5 features prior to deployment:

Category Business need Microsoft 365 for enterprise products or features
Productivity
Make collaboration easier Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive
Improve productivity for remote and mobile workers Microsoft 365 workloads and cloud-based data
Increase creativity and innovation Windows Ink, Cortana at Work, PowerPoint
Security
Identity & access management Dedicated global administrator accounts with Microsoft Entra multifactor authentication (MFA) and Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management (PIM)
MFA for all user accounts
Conditional Access
Security Reader
Windows Hello
Windows Credential Guard
Threat protection Advanced Threat Analytics
Windows Defender
Defender for Office 365
Microsoft Defender for Office 365
Microsoft 365 threat investigation and response
Information protection Azure Information Protection
Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
Windows Information Protection (WIP)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps
Microsoft Intune
Security management Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Windows Defender Security Center
Remote and mobile access and business partners
Better security for remote and mobile workers Microsoft Intune
Reduce remote access infrastructure for employees Microsoft 365 workloads and cloud-based data
Improve connectivity and lower overhead for B2B transactions Federated authentication and cloud-based resources
Compliance
Adhere to regional regulatory requirements GDPR features in Microsoft 365
Management
Lower IT overhead for installing client updates Windows 11 Enterprise updates
Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise updates

Next step

Learn about the Contoso Corporation on-premises network and how it was optimized for access and latency to Microsoft 365 cloud-based resources.

See also

Microsoft 365 for enterprise overview