From IT Chaos to Cloud Control in Commercial Real Estate

This commercial real estate firm has been part of the North London property landscape for over 25 years. Known for its focus on the commercial market and its deep local expertise, the business has grown to include multiple offices across the city, each handling a broad portfolio of clients and sites.

Despite its size, the team runs lean (fewer than 50 employees) and relies heavily on operational efficiency to stay responsive in a fast-moving sector. But while the business had expanded physically, its systems hadn’t kept up, with each site running independently and technology starting to drag on day-to-day performance.

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Industry: Commercial Real Estate

Organisation Size: Less than 50 employees

Service Areas: Microsoft Azure Hosted Desktops and Servers, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams Telephony

With four offices scattered across London, this growing real estate firm had unintentionally built a patchwork of systems. Each site was operating its own separate databases for customers, invoices, and internal documents, which meant data couldn’t flow freely, and teams were stuck emailing attachments back and forth just to collaborate.

Connectivity between sites ran through outdated BT ISDN lines, there was no central IT management, and reporting had to be done manually, often duplicated (or triplicated!) across locations. As the business grew, the cracks widened: productivity slowed, costs crept up, and agility took a hit.

Under the surface, there were even bigger concerns. Each branch was reliant on its own physical infrastructure, with no disaster recovery or business continuity plan in place. When a local server failed, the only option was to source new hardware and hope backups restored cleanly a process that could bring operations to a halt.

Add in the cost of regular server upgrades, unmanaged devices, and mounting inefficiencies, and it was clear the business wasn’t just working around outdated infrastructure. It was being held back by it.

The goal was to unify operations, improve resilience, and replace outdated systems with a scalable, cloud-first approach. We focused on building a consistent, centralised setup that would support every office, without requiring costly infrastructure at each location.

• Deployed a central Microsoft Azure Server and consolidated all databases into a single environment.
• Introduced a central file server with branch-specific access and permissions to streamline collaboration and protect sensitive data.
• Implemented Microsoft Windows Remote Desktop Services (RDS) to enable consistent, secure access to files and applications across all locations.
• Enabled Azure GRS (Geo-Redundant Storage) and ZRS (Zone-Redundant Storage) backups, ensuring robust data protection and regional resiliency.
• Rolled out Microsoft Teams Telephony across all branches, allowing the business to retire legacy ISDN lines and modernise communications.
• Upgraded all laptops to Windows 11, and deployed Azure-based mobile device management, enabling central control and security across the device estate.

This was far more than an IT upgrade: it was a full operational reset.

With everything now centralised in the cloud, the business runs on a single, secure environment where data, access, permissions, and backups are all managed centrally. No more duplicate databases, no more fragmented infrastructure, and no more waiting on hardware when things go wrong.

When a new site opened in 2019, the business didn’t need to purchase new servers or overhaul infrastructure. They simply added new users to Azure; scaling seamlessly as the team expanded.

Since the transformation, communication has improved, collaboration is easier, and operations run more smoothly across every location. The results speak for themselves:

• A 30% year-on-year increase in sales
• A 60% reduction in IT costs

Most importantly, the business now has the digital foundations to scale without friction, and the visibility and control to make confident decisions at every level.