BluSky Restoration Contractors are first on scene when disaster strikes, restoring buildings – and lives – after fires, floods, and storms. While their frontline field teams specialize in managing chaos, behind the scenes, their Microsoft 365 environment was becoming more untamed: under-governed and under structured M365 administration.
BluSky’s Director, Information Technology Operations and Services, Matt Bartels, explains, “My challenge is to support the organizational mission of restoring property to its top value. We needed a clear IT strategy and better and faster tools to keep operational technology running with optimal efficiency.”
With a small, lean IT team expected to serve constant demands from both business operations and equity stakeholders, BluSky turned to CoreView to deliver operational efficiency, control, and visibility to its Microsoft 365 environment at scale.
BluSky’s Microsoft 365 environment is dynamic and fast-changing, just like the business itself. Acquisitions, new ventures, and a steady flow of new users meant that maintaining governance was becoming increasingly challenging. And when a catastrophe happens, it is all hands on deck. Weathering disaster scenarios means that IT resources need to focus on urgent and high-value work and not be diverted to M365 maintenance and management issues that could otherwise be standardized and automated.
"We have constant waves of pressure in the organization as a result of the business we are in. On top of this, you have a lot of volatility in your M365 environment—a lot of constant change. Every bit of time we have to spend on M365 administration and monitoring is an opportunity cost.” – Matt Bartels, Director, Information Technology Operations and Services, BluSky
Organizational growth and change, coupled with the business's rapid-response nature, meant that BluSky needed to find a way to manage the M365 ecosystem at scale with a small team and limited resources. Day-to-day work was becoming overwhelming, especially when disasters in the real world created corresponding but unpredictable IT demands.
"Built-in permissions in M365 do not address best-practice security and are not designed for operational scale. There were always issues with permissions, access, repeatability, and basic system maintenance. A higher level of oversight, more automation, and more scripted responses are needed to scale up. This is the second organization into which I’ve brought CoreView to solve these problems.” – Matt Bartels, Director, Information Technology Operations and Services, BluSky
BluSky had outsourced tier-1 Microsoft 365 admin work to a managed service provider to try to alleviate some of the pressure on their small IT team. But this introduced risk and opened the door to a variety of other problems, particularly in ensuring data and process consistency.
"With privileged access to do user maintenance, group changes, and so on, a third-party MSP can introduce security risks and a lot of dangerous inconsistencies into your environment. An MSP may serve hundreds of customers, each with separate processes and requirements – how can we be sure they will remember our requirements and policies?” -Matt Bartels, Director, Information Technology Operations and Services, BluSky
Segmenting M365 access and authority with vendors and third parties was a challenge. There was no easy way to control what they could or could not touch. BluSky needed a governance solution to secure granular security, access, permissions, and controls that would also let them scope back permissions granted to MSPs and introduce templates and workflows to keep management consistent.
“I don’t want to undersell the importance of consistency. With too many chefs in the kitchen over time with different technical approaches, the more inconsistency expands, and inconsistency equals less scalability. Without consistency of processes and workflows, your IT team remains reactive rather than proactive.” – Matt Bartels, Director, Information Technology Operations and Services, BluSky
Like many fast-growing companies, BluSky is backed by private equity, which provides guidance and direction on security standards, tools, and practices. BluSky needed to be nimble to respond to these recommendations and differentiate our solutions and management as a value benefit to the portfolio.
“You owe your equity owners a cybersecurity strategy, and part of that is managing who has access to what, when, to reassure owners that their investment is safe. That also requires getting control over data spread across apps throughout the M365 ecosystem and making this auditable.” – Matt Bartels, Director, Information Technology Operations and Services, BluSky
Working with equity owners comes with other demands, such as the need for clean, repeatable reports generated from audits. Owners want to see clear and consistent reporting and a level of governance that provides reassurance to stakeholders without creating more operational overhead.
"Audits coming down from our equity owners meant we needed structured, consistent reporting, but pulling that data meant logging into portal after portal after portal. We need to be able to show that security controls are working as designed.” – Matt Bartels, Director, Information Technology Operations and Services, BluSky
"CoreView lets us scale operations without scaling chaos."
"We needed structure, rules, and consistency. CoreView delivered exactly that. CoreView steps in and bridges the gap that Microsoft left wide open." – Matt Bartels, Director, Information Technology Operations and Services, BluSky
With CoreView as a security and governance solution, BluSky was able to address its key challenges: operational overload and inefficiency, risk and inconsistency borne of working with MSPs, and oversight and auditability for investors.
Avoid need for dedicated M365 administrator: Save at least 60,000 USD per headcount per year with CoreView. BluSky was able to relieve pressure on existing IT staff and avoid hiring dedicated M365 administrators.
CoreView provided BluSky with the operational structure that Microsoft did not, giving them the ability to:
With CoreView in place, BluSky was finally able to deliver consistent, secure, and auditable Microsoft 365 operations—no matter how fast the business moved.
For BluSky, CoreView isn’t just a tool—it’s an operational safety net and long-term governance solution. CoreView answers the question how a two-person team can keep up with the demands of a 1,600+-employee disaster recovery company and satisfy reporting requirements from equity stakeholders, all while maintaining a secure, well-governed Microsoft 365 environment.
"CoreView lets us scale operations without scaling chaos." – Matt Bartels, Director, Information Technology Operations and Services, BluSky