<p>Luxury car maker Aston Martin has always been ahead of the curve technologically, notably putting in place a long-term cloud strategy back in 2007, when it was already using a third-party provider to host Microsoft Exchange 2003 off-premise.</p><p>"It was quite unusual at that time because cloud hadn't really come about in terms of application as a service as we'd know it now," says Aston Martin IT infrastructure manager, Daniel Roach-Rooke. "As time has gone on, cloud offerings have matured from the various providers, and we've used cloud a lot since 2010."</p><p>The company has now decided to simply let Microsoft itself administer Aston Martin's cloud infrastructure, and it is not stopping just at Exchange. Last April, the company shifted from Lotus Notes' Business Productivity Tool to Microsoft Office 365.</p><p>"365 is designed as a cloud offering, and it works very well for us in terms of capacity planning, hardware, remote access issues... it goes on and on," says Roach-Rooke. "We're not that big an organisation and we don't have many IT teams, so to be able to rely on Microsoft to run email is a big advantage."</p><p><a href="http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/analysis/2276996/microsoft-in-driving-seat-of-aston-martin-mobility-upgrade">Keep reading...</a></p>