Apex Group improves user experience for employees and drives in-year cost savings by adopting Windows 365

“Once people started to engage in the transformation and hear their colleagues talking about the Windows 365 proposition – and that it looked and felt very familiar and was created for our end users – it was the biggest drive that got us over the line.”

Jason Pressland, Global CTO of Apex Group, is explaining the process of leading the company to adopt Windows 365. 

“It was really about taking people through that transition. Once the momentum started, that helped us in keeping the pace of change,” Pressland says.

A global financial services company and home to over 13,000 people, Apex Group had undergone a major acquisition when it recognized it needed technology that could grow and scale with it.

Historically, Apex Group used different providers to offer its users a virtual desktop infrastructure. But it lacked flexibility in meeting its changing business needs. Apex Group’s growth outstripped the existing solutions’ ability to scale at the same pace, which led to performance and stability issues, poor end user experience, high costs to run and maintain, and compatibility and integration challenges.

Perhaps the most pressing challenge with the previous solution was the loss in productivity due to poor performance and reliability on virtual desktops, particularly in remote locations and low-bandwidth scenarios. With offices spread across over 50 countries, that presented a multitude of barriers for Apex Group.

That’s when the company decided to adopt Windows 365 to deliver a secure, regional and personalized Windows experience from any device.

Making the switch

The biggest driver for Apex Group was improving the end user experience and removing the inefficiencies that made servicing clients harder, bringing focus to client excellence. That included leveraging a new VDI Solution, the latest feature for Microsoft Teams that optimizes the delivery of multimedia workloads on Cloud PCs.

When they set out to integrate an acquired company with one of the largest technology footprints in its history, Apex Group began by exploring small pilots and started working with Microsoft to discover the architecture and design, and how they could phase the implementation since there was an enormous volume of activity that needed to be done, some of which was highly complex. 

“Part of why we engaged with Microsoft was that with it being such a new technology for us, if we did encounter issues, we knew we had the right team directly engaged to help us work through them, as speed was of the essence to meet in-year cost savings,” Pressland says.

A single platform solution 

One of the benefits of adopting Windows 365 was moving to a single platform which has created efficiencies for Apex Group’s team.

“It means that our team can focus on delivering leading edge solutions to our clients and optimizing the technology landscape further. By modernizing our systems, we’ve freed up capacity for our engineers to apply their expertise to more meaningful projects, creating greater value for the group,” Pressland says, mentioning his teams now have more time to focus on revenue creation and operational efficiencies. Productivity has also gone up for all group functions and client operations teams.

Another benefit was the overall financial impact, a substantial in-year saving was achieved with greater savings expected in future years. 

“A key part of the business case was to show the in-year savings we could achieve by transitioning away from our previous technology,” Pressland says.

There were several moving parts that make up that 40% as Pressland explains. But when the team examined it holistically, taking into consideration storage costs, server management, the integration following the acquisition, and managing multiple ecosystems that rolled into one with Windows 365, it was a different approach that brought slightly different savings.

“I think as a whole if you were to take where we were at the beginning of 2024, and compare it to where we are now, there's probably been about a 40% savings in this transition, predominately led by Windows 365,” Pressland says.

Cost cutting and creating new opportunities for the future

One of the benefits that Apex Group discovered during the implementation of Windows 365 was a potential reduction in device costs.

Previously the Group had expensive, high-performance capabilities on employees’ desktops which they paid a premium for. 

Now with the implementation of Windows 365, they’re able to look at reducing their hardware costs in terms of what lives on desktops. 

“It’s also creating opportunities for us to look at how remote workers are using this technology on the end device management side as well,” Pressland says.

For example, every person requiring a laptop if they work from home and work in the office isn’t necessarily a requirement anymore, Pressland elaborates.

That could lead to increased savings for the company, and opportunities to invest more resources in meaningful ways.
For a company that continues to grow at pace, having the perfect technology partner offers a pathway to a myriad of possibilities.