Until recently, the Group’s several companies, each with a specific focus, operated separately with minimal interaction. In 2017, however, the group decided to align them more closely with each other, but that proved as much a technical challenge as a human one. For Michael, the solution came with Google Workspace and Google Cloud.

“We had six different companies on six different IT platforms,” he says. “If we were going to improve communication and drive collaboration, we needed to unite them all on Google Workspace and Google Cloud.”

Cloud-based productivity for maximum efficiency with minimal upkeep

EDUA Group has built itself up through a combination of innovative teaching techniques and smart acquisitions. While this leads to impressive growth, it can also make it harder to quickly integrate new companies who have already established their own culture and ways of working. By 2017, the group had decided it needed to make a concerted effort to bring its companies together and hired Michael to lead the project.

“At the time, 99% of our infrastructure was in on-premises servers,” says Michael. “Then the email and office productivity platforms were all different from company to company, so communication was very difficult and collaboration almost impossible.”

The only reliable method of communication was via email, and that often led to lost documents or long and confusing threads with multiple copies of the same document. At the same time, with physical and finite exchange servers, workers’ email accounts were restricted to 300 megabytes. There was no centralized disc management system, so if a device was lost or damaged, documents could be lost forever.

To get around the limitations of the existing tools, employees would use personal messaging apps or file storage accounts. “There was a whole shadow IT system that we couldn’t monitor or back up,” says Michael. “It was a nightmare to manage.”

EDUA Group needed a cloud-based solution that would minimize management overhead for IT while maintaining the same standards of technical performance throughout the group. In early 2018, it began working with Revolgy, a leading Google Cloud Premier Partner with a stellar reputation in the country. “If you spend enough time in the IT industry in the Czech Republic, you hear Revolgy’s name come up time and time again when it comes to cloud technology,” says Michael.

The first task for Revolgy and EDUA Group was to analyze the situation as it stood: what were the challenges and what was needed to solve them. It was very clear that Google Cloud, and Google Workspace especially, would be the best and most efficient solution for EDUA Group’s needs.

With more than 10 years’ experience with Google Cloud and Google Workspace, Revolgy took the time to craft a carefully customized change management scheme for all of EDUA Group’s employees in addition to the technical preparation. As Bohuslav Dohnal, founder of Revolgy puts it, “We know that a tool is nothing without the right skill set to use it. For a project like this to work, you have to have both the technological and human elements working hand in hand.”

After making sure it was properly prepared, EDUA Group rolled out Google Workspace in mid-2018 in a series of carefully managed stages. First to its IT team, then to early adopters throughout the group, and finally it went live for all employees. The Group was pleasantly surprised by how quickly and smoothly it went. “I’ve seen companies take months, even years to make this kind of transition,” says Michael. “We did it, with Revolgy’s help, in just a few weeks.”

Taking hundreds of courses online to help students keep studying

The ability to stay agile and work at any time, from anywhere, on any device became absolutely crucial for EDUA Group in March 2020, when the COVID-19 crisis shifted the Czech Republic to a state of lockdown and quarantine.

Google Classroom and Google Meet have been core technologies of EDUA Group’s e-learning platforms, but with the restrictions imposed by the crisis, the Group has relied on them to an unprecedented extent. “Google Classroom has been absolutely vital in keeping the group going during the COVID-19 crisis,” says Michael. “Teachers can effortlessly keep all their materials in one place online, with students able to access courses wherever they are.”

Using Google Classroom, EDUA Group was able to convert hundreds of its courses into fully online modules within a few days. In just a few weeks, it plans to convert thousands more courses to continue serving its students even as they face the most severe restrictions seen for generations.

For Michael, the move to Google Workspace and Google Cloud couldn’t have come at a better time. “If anyone were to ask me for advice about moving to the Cloud, I’d tell them first of all to find a good partner, like Revolgy and Google Cloud. Then I’d tell them to focus on change management. Finally, I’d tell them not to be afraid. The world is changing, and changing fast. A cloud-based infrastructure helps you keep up with that change and stay on top.”