Microsoft 365 & Modern Workplace

The problem

A company infrastructure grows by addition: one service at a time, one device at a time, one exception at a time. After a few years identity, devices, mail, documents and security risk being managed with different tools and different rules, and every change has to be made in several places. The cost is not only time: without a central identity, device management and multi-factor authentication, an organisation’s security depends on the attention of every single user. The work I describe here is the evolution of the Microsoft infrastructure of the company where I am IT manager.

The solution

I carried forward, as internal projects, the evolution of the company’s Microsoft infrastructure: Microsoft 365 as the platform, Microsoft Entra ID for identities, Microsoft Intune for device management, Microsoft Defender for protection, multi-factor authentication for access, SharePoint for documents, and above all of it a governance: who can do what, under which rules, and how it is verified. These are projects that move in steps, because every change touches people who have to keep working while the infrastructure changes underneath them.

Technologies

• Microsoft 365
• Microsoft Entra ID
• Microsoft Intune (endpoint management)
• Microsoft Defender
• Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
• SharePoint
• Governance and security

The result

A governed Microsoft infrastructure: identities, devices, protection and documents inside one platform, with rules that are written down and verifiable. It is work that is hard to see from outside, and I put it on this page for exactly that reason: it is the base the company’s other systems stand on, and an organisation notices it mostly when it is missing. Security and governance are not a separate chapter: they are the criterion by which every part of the infrastructure is added or changed.