Bob Evans Restaurants, a national restaurant chain based in Ohio, divested from their food division, Bob Evans Farms. As a result, a technical separation of the two organizations had to occur.
Where most would have seen an IT roadblock, Bob Evans Restaurants saw an opportunity. The separation of their organization was an opportunity to redefine their IT strategy and become a 100% focused cloud organization.
“We were excited by the prospect of a digital transformation and a business transformation occurring simultaneously,” said Chris Delong, Chief Information Officer at Bob Evans Restaurants. “However, in order to successfully transform our workplace, we knew we needed someone who was just as excited about the challenge as we were. We needed Blue Chip Consulting Group."
As a trusted Microsoft Gold Partner and cloud expert, Bob Evans Restaurants engaged Blue Chip to help them 1.) separate from Bob Evans Farms 2.) adopt the cloud and 3.) manage and optimize their cloud environment.
First, Blue Chip focused on successfully moving Bob Evans to their own domain in a way that mitigated risk and ensured that end users were not disrupted. How? Through Embrace, Blue Chip’s comprehensive adoption and change management program (“ACM”).
The custom-developed ACM program helps clients ensure a solution is effectively embraced, adopted, and used. Embrace offers a structured and proactive approach to getting employees to successfully adopt new technologies. At Bob Evan’s the program did the following:
In coordination with ACM program rollout, Blue Chip established a greenfield environment and focused on getting Bob Evans' infrastructure, hardware, and applications ready for its own environment. Leveraging technologies like Azure, Office 365 and Windows 10, Blue Chip set out to migrate email, move files, and migrate and secure identities.
As a result of that aforementioned work effort, over 18.63TB of data were migrated along with 30,264 accounts, 273 machines, 1,500 mailboxes and 1,385,053 files.
With divestiture activities complete, and Bob Evans on its own directory and domain, Blue Chip set out to modernize desktops, migrate servers to cloud, and modernize applications.
Following the aforementioned activities, Blue Chip moved Bob Evans' intranet (which was hosted on premise and leveraged 14 servers) to Azure, so that they could take advantage of Azure’s many platform as a service (“PaaS”) offerings including Azure SQL Database and Azure Web Apps leveraging Umbraco as a content management system.
“The speed, quality, and execution of the deliverables that we outlined for Blue Chip were stellar,” said Delong. “The team was consistent, agile, and willing to do whatever it took to get the job done.”
Next, Blue Chip moved Bob Evans from Oracle to Dynamics 365 for both ERP and CRM. During this transition, it was required that data be able to flow in and out of Dynamics based on the needs of the business. In order to facilitate this required data flow, Blue Chip developed 20 custom applications using Logic Apps in Azure.
Shortly following the ERP migration, Blue Chip migrated Bob Evan’s phone system to Skype for Business, providing them with secure, real-time collaboration.
So, with data and servers in the cloud, and over 20 integrations with Dynamics 365, Bob Events Restaurants needed a way to ensure IT could handle items like access requests and feature updates.
Simply put, Bob Evans’ incumbent operations lifecycle management tool, HP Application Lifecycle Management, wouldn’t cut it.
So, Blue Chip enabled Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Team Services, taking Bob Evans' source control into the cloud. Now, Bob Evans can make its application lifecycle faster with enhanced planning, testing, and release capabilities.
"In six months Blue Chip took Bob Evans from a dual datacenter organization to 100% in the cloud,” said Delong. “Not only did we move out of the datacenter; but we migrated from on-site Exchange to Office 365; we upgraded our intranet; we moved off of Oracle and Cisco. In short, we changed everything. The best part is that, to our end users, it was a non-event. That’s unheard of in the IT world and I owe that all to Blue Chip.”
Not only was Blue Chip Consulting Group able to successfully separate Bob Evans Restaurants from Bob Evans Farms, but help them eliminate their datacenter.
Through the use of Blue Chip’s Azure migration services, Bob Evans was able to decommission and / or move servers into the cloud resulting in Bob Evans going from 0% to 100% cloud-based.
But, even with migration activities complete, Blue Chip was not done leading Bob Evans on their cloud journey. Blue Chip’s next goal was to help Bob Evans realize the full value of their cloud-based infrastructure through ongoing management and optimization.
By leveraging Blue Chip’s Cloud Managed Services, Bob Evans could ensure 1.) that their cloud environment was operating at peak performance and 2.) free up IT resources to focus on strategic business initiatives and not day-to-day management and DevOps.
Through a dedicated Operations as a Service team, Blue Chip was able to provide 24/7 support and proactive monitory and management to Bob Evans. Real-time reporting ensured day-to-day workload optimization, end-user adoption, and system security. Quarterly report reviews between Blue Chip and Bob Evans ensured licensing needs were met and utilization stayed high.
Ongoing DevOps ensured the entire application lifecycle was managed according to Microsoft best practices and requirements set forth by Bob Evans.
In conclusion, with all aspects of their cloud lifecycle managed by Blue Chip, from assessment to migration and management, Bob Evans was able to realize agility, cost predictability, and top-notch security. Their investment in Microsoft was maximized and continues to be maximized through their ongoing relationship with Blue Chip.