PRO+ Premium Content/Network Evolution

When CIO Alan Crawford joined City & Guilds Group in 2016, the U.K.-based vocational training nonprofit had made a slew of recent business acquisitions as part of an effort to diversify its offerings and expand its global reach. The organization, founded in 1878 by a collection of London fishmongers, goldsmiths and other liverymen, now operates in more than 100 countries across six continents. And while geographic expansion may have proven strategically wise, it presented some early challenges for the new CIO. One central issue involved implementing software-driven network elements to fix connectivity among company locations. A few months into his tenure as CIO, Crawford transitioned a recently acquired New Zealand company to Microsoft Office 365, the productivity suite preferred throughout City & Guilds. But when it joined the service, which routes traffic to data centers in Europe, the company's connectivity suffered a major hit. Suddenly, basic tasks like sending emails, making Skype calls and sharing documents became ...