Still got a server in the office? You don’t have to bin it to modernise

Plenty of businesses are keeping their office server for now, for good reasons. What they often don’t realise is that “not fully cloud yet” has quietly turned into “not modernised at all”: two sets of passwords, computers nobody can see, and a Microsoft 365 subscription doing half the job it could.

Picture two address books for the same office.

One sits in reception, and the other sits in the post room. Both list the same people. When somebody joins, leaves or changes their extension, someone has to update both of them by hand, and remember to.

Most of the time it works. Then someone forgets, a parcel goes to a person who left in March, and nobody can say which book was right.

A lot of businesses run their IT exactly like this and don’t know it.

Two systems that have never been introduced

If your business still has a server in the office, your staff probably log into their computers using it. Separately, they use Microsoft 365 for email, Teams and files.

Same people, two systems. In many offices the two have never been connected. As far as the technology is concerned, “Sarah in accounts” on the server and “Sarah in accounts” in Microsoft 365 are two strangers who happen to share a name.

So everyone ends up with two passwords. To keep things manageable, IT often sets them to the same thing. Sometimes, uncomfortably often, that’s something like Welcome123.

Then Sarah changes one of them, the other one doesn’t change, and on Monday morning she can’t get into her email. Someone at your IT provider fixes it by hand, and you’re paying for that time.

That isn’t managing your IT. It’s babysitting it.

The fix doesn’t involve getting rid of the server

The two systems can be connected so they stay in step automatically. One account per person and one password. Change it in one place and it changes everywhere. When someone leaves, switching them off in one place switches them off everywhere.

Microsoft provides the tool for this, and it’s the approach Microsoft now recommends. It works alongside the server you already have. Nothing gets ripped out.

The bigger miss: the computers themselves

Some businesses have already connected their accounts. Even so, this next part catches most of them out.

Microsoft 365 includes a tool called Intune for managing company computers. It lets you see every machine, push updates and security settings to all of them at once, and lock or wipe a laptop if it’s lost. If you’re on Microsoft 365 Business Premium, as many small businesses are, it’s already in what you pay for.

The common belief is that Intune only works for “cloud” computers, so while the office server is still around, none of this applies to you.

That belief is wrong. Computers that log in through your office server can be managed in Intune too, and Microsoft recommends it.

So a business that thinks it’s stuck until its cloud move is finished is often paying for a device management tool and leaving every office computer outside it.

“Won’t the old rules and the new rules fight?”

It’s a fair worry. An office server that has been running for ten years carries years of settings: what staff can install, what the screen looks like, what happens at login. Add a second system giving instructions and you’d expect a mess.

Microsoft thought of this. You can tell your computers that the modern system is in charge, and the old server settings are set aside. Security protection and Windows updates are handled slightly differently. Each has its own dedicated modern tool, and those settings should be moved across deliberately rather than left behind.

This doesn’t need to be a big-bang project. It’s a planned move that can happen in stages while the server keeps doing whatever it’s still needed for.

Why this matters even if you’re “nearly cloud”

Most businesses that keep a server have a reason: an older accounts package, a line-of-business system, a lease that hasn’t run out. The plan is usually to move fully to the cloud eventually.

The risk is that “eventually” becomes the reason nothing improves in the meantime. Meanwhile passwords stay shared and predictable, laptops stay invisible, and every IT change costs someone’s time.

You can have most of the benefits of a modern setup now and still keep the server until you’re ready to let it go. And when that day comes, the move is much smaller, because most of the work is already done.

Three questions to ask

1. Are our office logins and our Microsoft 365 logins connected, or separate? If staff have two passwords, or IT resets them by hand, they’re separate.
2. Are our office computers managed in Intune? Could you see them all today, and could you lock or wipe one this afternoon if it went missing? “They’re on the server, so no” is the answer to push back on.
3. When the old server settings and the new ones disagree, which one wins, and what’s the plan for the server?You want a clear answer to the first part and a rough timeline for the second. “We’ll sort it when we go cloud” isn’t a plan.

Our founder shows exactly how to connect an office server to Microsoft 365 and bring those computers into Intune. It’s worth sending to whoever looks after your IT.

The free Business Risk Audit covers how well your business can see and control its own computers. Four minutes, no jargon.