Challenge

The client is a British multinational company that manufactures and sells cigarettes, tobacco, electronic cigarettes, and other products.

Local regulation required all Kazakhstan office's employee and business data to be stored and processed in-country, forcing a migration off centralized European cloud platforms while staying compliant with the company's global standards.​

Thus,

• The existing Azure and AWS environments had to be faithfully replicated and operational within 8 weeks to keep business operations and end-user services running.
• The target was a VMware-based private cloud on local Kazakhstan infrastructure, with secure connectivity to the client's global datacenters for hybrid operations and central management.​
• Tightly integrated platforms (Active Directory, SCCM, Exchange 2016, IAM and cloud-hosted apps) had to migrate and coexist without breaking authentication, messaging, software deployment or directory sync.​
• Secure VPN, network segmentation, monitoring, backup and disaster recovery all had to be delivered while preserving the client's global security controls.

Solution

• Analyzed the existing Azure and AWS-hosted environments, mapping services, dependencies and the company's lobal standards to be preserved​
  

• Designed and right-sized the target VMware-based private cloud on the local Kazakhstan service provider infrastructure​
  

• Migrated and integrated tightly coupled platforms (Active Directory, SCCM, Exchange 2016, IAM), preserving authentication, messaging, software deployment and directory synchronization​
  

• Established secure VPN connectivity and network segmentation between the local cloud and BAT global datacenters​
  

• Implemented monitoring, backup and disaster recovery aligned with BAT global security controls, with cooperative testing before cutover
  

Results

• Full compliance with data residency requirements, with employee and business data stored and processed in-country​.
  

• Azure and AWS-hosted services replicated and operational on the local VMware private cloud within the 8-week timeframe​.
  

• Business operations and end-user services continued without disruption throughout the migration​.
  

• Secure hybrid connectivity to the client's global datacenters maintained, preserving centralized management and global security standards.