Today, in order to be more competitive and productive, businesses need to be in constant contact with the employees, suppliers, partners and customers that make up their ecosystem. Going beyond traditional IT service offerings, Victrix - an IT consulting business with offices in Montreal and Quebec City - adapts its services to its customers' needs, always taking into account the unique priorities and complexities of each customer. As a certified Microsoft partner, Victrix turned to cloud-based Microsoft Office 365 to give them a major competitive boost in the world of IT consulting.

With about 150 consultants split between the two cities, Victrix is comprised of several consulting groups. For example, the telecom group oversees the architecture of telecommunications between offices, while the collaboration group focuses on developing Microsoft SharePoint2010 systems for clients. The infrastructure group helps clients migrate to the cloud.

Victrix's Board of Directors is an integral part of the company's operations. Given the often-times sensitive and confidential nature of information exchanged between members, Victrix needed a system separate from their internal IT environment to manage the exchange of private e-mails and documents between board members. The company's internal IT system was not secure enough -after all, anyone could access it. Using Microsoft's cloud, Victrix developed an entire document management system, Virtual Board, as a way of storing and managing confidential information.

Bewildered at the prospect of organizing Board of Directors meetings, which involves coordinating multiple calendars, as well as archiving documents and centralizing information, Victrix needed a solution to simplify tasks. Virtual Board not only allowed Victrix to quickly plan, organize and run board meetings remotely, but also in a completely secure environment.

"The key to Virtual Board is that it's hosted in a Cloud Computing environment," explains Jean Julien, VP Alliances, Victrix.

"Virtual Board has its own virtual office equipped with collaborative solutions, like video conferencing, that optimize communications," he continues. "Microsoft's Lync enables us to set up ad-hoc meetings and offers video conferencing solutions when it's not possible to assemble everyone in the same room."

As one of the many components of Office 365, Microsoft Lync ushers in a new connected experience, transforming every communication into interaction that is more collaborative, engaging, and accessible.

Virtual Board needed a Microsoft SharePoint2010 server to securely store and share documents. SharePoint delivers the best productivity experience by letting people work together in ways that are most effective for them. Whether through the PC, browser or mobile phone, SharePoint 2010 offers an intuitive and familiar user experience and enables people to collaborate effectively within the their current work context. "Office 365 combines Exchange, SharePoint2010, Office 2010 and all of these capabilities are complementary and work well together," says Julien.

The advancement of Microsoft's Cloud offering - Office 365 - provided an ideal foundation for helping Victrix better manage the meetings, logistics and correspondence between its Board of Directors. But, Victrix is in the business of consulting, and saw a great opportunity to use Virtual Board as a service offering for clients. Beyond just hosting their own internal solution, Victrix opened up a new revenue stream by selling it to other clients. Already, Victrix was helping clients move aspects of their business and daily operations to the cloud, by evaluating each case individually and making recommendations.

"We are currently working with a few clients to find out what they can move to the Cloud. For example, if a client is setting up a temporary office for an engineering project, they don't have to set up costly servers that require maintenance. Office 365 could meet their needs just as well," says Julien.

Virtual Board opened up the doors for an entirely new Cloud-based service offering.

Julien insists it's important for his workforce, as consultants, to be well versed in how to use the Cloud.

"Our decision to adopt Office 365 was also motivated in part so we could better recommend it to clients," he says. "At Victrix, we need to keep our knowledge full and extensive - and the cloud is an important part of our expertise and offerings"