The Company
Kempinski is a luxury hotel management group celebrating its 125th anniversary this year. Steeped in history, the iconic company dates back to 1897, crowning them Europe’s oldest luxury hotel group.
A growing collection of distinguished properties proudly bears the Kempinski name. Their illustrious portfolio currently boasts 81 of the world’s most breathtaking destinations spread across 35 countries, each possessing their trademark exclusivity and European flair.
Kempinski’s prestigious heritage is equally matched by its ambitious vision for the future. And the group understands that embracing technology is the key to offering a world-class guest experience for another 125 years.
The evolution of the relationship
Kempinski has been a valued CloudM customer since 2010 when they used CloudM Migrate to transition from Novell GroupWise to Google Workspace.
Their relatively early adoption of Google Workspace shows their early commitment to cloud solutions: they could see the value on offer and understood the pivotal role the technology would play in the future.
Moving to the cloud enabled Kempinski to create a flexible, agile platform which allowed them to react to market opportunities faster than their peers and capitalize on innovation opportunities as they’ve presented themselves.
CloudM has played a central role in Kempinski’s tech stack ever since. Kempinski benefits from the CloudM Automate features with our Staff Directory being at the heart of their staff collaboration.
CTS, our partner and sister company (as part of the CTS Group), manages the Onboarding and Offboarding Workflow features on Kempinski’s behalf, setting up automation that work behind the scenes to streamline Kempinski’s day-to-day operations.CloudM’s automated onboarding solutions help new employees integrate seamlessly into the company.
New employees are granted immediate access to the resources they need for their role, including shared documents and calendars.
From company policy and culture training, to team introductions and job benefits, everything is accessible from day one, making new employees’ experience as straightforward and stress-free as possible.
At the opposite end of the employee journey, CloudM’s Offboarding Workflow feature automates Kempinski’s offboarding process, revoking passwords and permissions for employees the moment they leave the company.
Both of these features free up untold labor hours that would otherwise be spent manually onboarding and offboarding members of staff.
Holly Simpson, the Account Manager for Kempinski at CTS, recognises the values of CloudM’s features. She said: “Our fruitful relationship with Kempinski stretches back over a decade now. And only grows stronger with each passing year. The CloudM features form an integral part of the efficient, automated, managed service that CTS delivers to keep the hotels running day-to-day.”
Shaping CloudM’s Archive solution
Kempinski’s more recent uptake of the CloudM Archive module shows a continuing confidence in CloudM (and CTS) to sit at the center of their digital operations.When Google replaced their free Vault Former Employee (VFE) licenses with paid Archive User (AU) licenses, at a cost of ~€50 each per year, Kempinski was potentially looking at an eye-watering bill in the hundreds of thousands.
So they turned to CloudM for help.CloudM rose to the challenge, providing a managed migration of thousands of Kempinski’s archived profiles to cloud storage quickly and automatically, using CloudM Migrate. This slashed their expected expenditure drastically while keeping their offboarded user data secure, easily accessible and compliant.
We used CloudM Migrate to perform this initial transfer because it was the fastest way to move the data. Then, we added the Archive step to Kempinski’s offboarding policies so anyone offboarded in the future would automatically have their data archived to the same storage bucket (or another of their choice).
Archived data can be retrieved in just a couple of clicks and data is automatically purged forever after a set length of time to keep businesses compliant.
“We’re proud to have embraced CloudM solutions for over a decade now. And we believe they are providing solutions geared for the future. They’re an essential part of our strategy going forward.”
Here’s to the future
CloudM simply wouldn’t exist without collaboration with our customers. We’ve consistently grown out of our customers’ requests, needs and feedback.
“Kempinski has been a partner in the truest sense of the word,” says Gary Bennion, CloudM’s Chief Technology and Customer Officer. “They have collaborated closely with us for years to help shape CloudM and they continue to be a key customer.”
We’re currently working with Kempinski to centralize and manage their staff user data across HR, SSO (via a third party application), Google Workspace, People Application, and CloudM. This will undoubtedly further strengthen our relationship and may even lead to the creation of new products.
Our symbiotic relationship with Kempinski has enabled both of us to achieve greater success, and our ongoing dialogue fosters continuous growth and innovation.
So, as Kempinski raises a glass and reflects on 125 years of excellence, CloudM looks forward to supporting their future success.
Want to benefit from the same features that Kempinski, and other industry leading companies such as Spotify, Netflix and Uber, use?
With over 35,000 customers worldwide, CloudM’s user management features have helped companies put office life on auto-pilot by automating time-consuming tasks, allowing them to focus on the big picture, eradicate human error and save both time and money.
For more information on our platform, request a free 15 minute demo call with one of our team.
About Version 2 Digital
Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.
Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.
About CloudM
CloudM is an award-winning SaaS company whose humble beginnings in Manchester have grown into a global business in just a few short years.
Our team of tech-driven innovators have designed a SaaS data management platform for you to get the most from your digital workspace. Whether it’s Microsoft 365, Google Workspace or other SaaS applications, CloudM drives your business through a simple, easy-to-use interface, helping you to work smarter, not harder.
By automating time-consuming tasks like IT admin, onboarding & offboarding, archiving and migrations, the CloudM platform takes care of the day-to-day, allowing you to focus on the big picture.
With over 35,000 customers including the likes of Spotify, Netflix and Uber, our all-in-one platform is putting office life on auto-pilot, saving you time, stress and money.
Cloud migrations are complex, always changing, and unique to every organization. You need the flexibility and control to tackle your project in the way that suits you best. This is why we have multiple migration deployment options to suit all businesses.
In this blog, we break down exactly what CloudM Migrate Self-Hosted is as well as explain security, endpoint, and installation information so you have more guidance when selecting a deployment option.
Definition
CloudM Migrate Self-Hosted is the downloadable version of CloudM Migrate, ideal for large and complex migrations. Migrate (Self-hosted) is highly configurable, allowing you to complete the most complex and demanding migrations seamlessly. Using our web interface, you can run a multitude of virtual machines to complete your self-hosted migration to Microsoft 365. Once set up in your environment, Migrate (Self-hosted) can securely migrate your mailboxes, files, SharePoint sites, mailbox archives, and more to Microsoft 365.
Security
If the organization has compliance obligations that do not permit you to use a third-party service, Migrate Self-Hosted is most appropriate. The software can be run behind your own organization’s firewall, critical data is kept internally and no other party has access to it.
CloudM Migrate already has end-to-end encryption between migration endpoints. The option to Self Host CloudM Migrate will completely isolate your migration data from your source environment to the destination cloud tenant.
CloudM has adopted the ISO 27001 standard as its framework and is externally certified. ISO27001 is one of the most popular information security standards in the world, focusing on protecting three key aspects of information; confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
Installation
Basic installation will install all components to a single machine and is suitable for performing migrations from a single server or as the main server in a multi-server migration.
If you have specialized requirements, have a pre-existing SQL Server instance you would like to use, or will be performing multi-server migrations using a server farm, you should also review the advanced installation documentation.
The following components makeup and are used by CloudM Migrate:
We’re here to help inform you about the most compatible deployment options for your business. Get in touch today to discuss your available options with one of our experienced solutions architects. 
Tenant-to-tenant migrations are fast becoming the most common type of migration performed due to mergers and acquisitions. CloudM’s Technical Architects, Scott Chuhran and Lloyd Deverick answer some common questions that are asked during a tenant-to-tenant migration.If you would prefer to listen to listen to this blog, please click the audio link below.
1. Can you describe the difference between an On-Premise install and a SaaS solution?
With on-premise, the customer owns everything including the network and hardware. This is a quick and easy install. With our SaaS solutions, this is stored in a dedicated VM in Azure cloud and is owned by CloudM.
2. How does CloudM Migrate handle data security between the source and destination?
Data is encrypted from the source to the destination, at rest from the source to our server, again across the server, and once more at rest to the destination.
3. What are the endpoint sources we can use for M365 as a destination?
Endpoint sources include Google, Microsoft 365, and on-prem exchange. Also included are legacy endpoints such as Lotus Notes, Zimbra, and also IMAP.
4. Can I migrate Google Vault to M365?
Our tool allows Google Vault migrations. Enter the query inside the tool and we will pull directly what we get outside of Google and paste it directly into the tenant as we get it from Google.
5. When merging 2 domains into one, how do we handle changing aliases?
This is done by uploading a config file with 2 columns in the csv. Every time it reads the word on the source, it will automatically convert to the destination. This works for permissions and email.
6. Can I migrate Google Forms to M365?
Yes, the form is taken out of Google and we capture answers, questions, and permissions. This is made into a cell spreadsheet and put into the Microsoft Tenant with all the data.
7. Can you explain the shrinking mailbox feature?
Simply, we can select a maximum item size and anything that is over this will be stripped out of the email and added to OneDrive. A link will be provided to the user with the item’s OneDrive destination.
8. How is Microsoft Teams content from M365 migrated during a tenant-to-tenant migration?
There are two elements to this as it differs depending on channels and chats. Channels are migrated like for like. One-to-one chats that are older than 7 days will go into Outlook and will be searchable. One-to-one chats that are newer than 7 days will go directly into Teams with a link to guide them to reference Outlook for older chats. 