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Bob Evans Cloud Adoption

The Making of a Cloud-Only Company

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 Core BTS."

Business Situation

As a trusted Microsoft Solutions Partner and Azure Expert MSP, Bob Evans Restaurants engaged Core BTS to help them...

  1. Separate from Bob Evans Farms
  2. Adopt the cloud
  3. Manage and optimize their cloud environment.

First, Core BTS 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, Core BTS’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:

Empower Your Teams

Prepared the workforce for upcoming changes through proper communication, awareness, scheduling, and training.

Evolve Your Business

Acted as a vehicle for optimizing adoption and usage.

Find Synergy

Provided a strategic approach for mitigating project risk and resistance.

“The speed, quality, and execution of the deliverables that we outlined for Core BTS were stellar. The team was consistent, agile, and willing to do whatever it took to get the job done.”

Chris Delong | CIO | Bob Evans Restaurants

Our Solution

In coordination with ACM program rollout, Core BTS 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, Core BTS 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, Core BTS set out to modernize desktops, migrate servers to cloud, and modernize applications.

Using Azure to its Potential

Following the aforementioned activities, Core BTS 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 Core BTS were stellar,” said Delong. “The team was consistent, agile, and willing to do whatever it took to get the job done.”

ERP and CRM Transitions

Next, Core BTS 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, Core BTS developed 20 custom applications using Logic Apps in Azure. Shortly following the ERP migration, Core BTS 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.

Take Your Control into the Cloud

Simply put, Bob Evans’ incumbent operations lifecycle management tool, HP Application Lifecycle Management, wouldn’t cut it. So, Core BTS enabled Azure DevOps Server and Azure DevOps 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 Core BTS 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 Core BTS.” Not only was Core BTS Consulting Group able to successfully separate Bob Evans Restaurants from Bob Evans Farms, but help them eliminate their datacenter.

Utilize Your Full Value with Cloud Managed Services

Through the use of Core BTS’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, Core BTS was not done leading Bob Evans on their cloud journey. Core BTS’s next goal was to help Bob Evans realize the full value of their cloud-based infrastructure through ongoing management and optimization. By leveraging Core BTS’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.

24/7 Support for Migrations

Through a dedicated Operations as a Service team, Core BTS 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 Core BTS 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 Core BTS, 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 Core BTS.

The Result

60% of servers eliminated
18.63 terabytes of data migrated
30,264 accounts migrated
1,500 mailboxes migrated
1.3 million files migrated

Bob Evans

Bob Evans Restaurants, also known as Bob Evans, is an American chain of restaurants owned by Golden Gate Capital based in New Albany, Ohio.

Technologies Used

Azure

Azure DevOps Server

Azure DevOps Services

Azure SQL Database

Azure Web Apps

Dynamic 365

Office 365

Web Forms

Windows 10