Intellectural Property Management with Azure
Summary
InnoWi GmbH uses Microsoft cloud platforms Office 365 and Azure to carry out their services regarding Intellectual Property Management. Using the cloud technologies InnoWi provides its partners with a flexible, highly available access to ensure optimum collaboration. In this project existing applications and data were transferred to a cloud IT infrastructure with significantly lower maintenance costs and an efficient system protection against downtime and data loss.
Office 365
Azure Remote App
Azure File Storage
Azure VM
Field of Business
The InnoWi GmbH protects and promotes inventions and is a leading patent application agency in Northwest Germany. Together with the inventors and research institutions, InnoWi develops optimum strategies and concepts for legal protection and the transfer of inventions into the economy. Furthermore, InnoWi acquires companies, negotiates license agreements and support the inventors in agreements with the project partners.
Motivation
In the past InnoWi used a locally developed IT system. System operation has been maintained by local hosting as well as through individual initiative of employees. InnoWi aimed at using fail-safe, stable systems and was, therefore, looking to replace the dedicated in-house system through scalable and maintenance-free systems in the cloud.
Due to increasing cooperation with external partners it became necessary to provide easy and secure access to patent data and thus to the IT systems of InnoWi GmbH. Especially relevant is that the data should be provided to partners in secure work spaces.
Besides, the use of modern information technology should replace the local IT hard and software in order to achieve higher flexibility and ease of maintenance.
Project Realisation
After the basic setup of Office 365 for InnoWi, Axtrion carried out data migration from the company’s internal mail server to Microsoft Exchange Online. Microsoft cloud services were used to migrate these data, as a result of which huge amounts of data could be transferred in a very short time.
Axtrion connected the workstations and mobile devices of InnoWi to the Microsoft Exchange Online servers to access the email and project data. With Skype for Business Axtrion could significantly improve the communication and collaboration between InnoWi teams. The system can replace traditional phone calls and enhance communication with further functionalities such as short messages (chat), audio calls, video conferencing, and remote screen sharing.
Most noteworthy is the creation of secure workrooms based on Microsoft SharePoint Online by Axtrion. Here InnoWi can share and edit document in real-time with partners under a strict access control.
- Virtual Machines for the operation of databases,
- Azure Storage as a file storage system, and
- Azure RemoteApp for providing the user interface on computers, notebooks, tablets and smartphones
Most importantly, Azure Backup ensured continuous backup of files and database contents.
Benefits
By using the Microsoft cloud platforms Office 365 and Microsoft Azure InnoWi has achieved the following benefits:
- Increased efficiency through process and technology optimisation
- Mobile and location independent access to applications and patent data
- Real-time collaboration with documents in secure workspaces
- Improved collaboration by using modern communication tools
- Enhancement of the existing patent management legacy software through flexible access over mobile devices
- Complete disaster recovery in the cloud
- 99.99% availability of applications and data
- Significant savings of IT costs (No maintenance and administrative costs)
