Customer Success Stories

Mediahuis harmonizes its IT landscape with Inetum

For Mediahuis, the fragmentation of digital platforms had become a brake on efficient collaboration. The solution? An ambitious migration to a single, centralized Microsoft 365 environment.

To continue growing as a European media powerhouse, you need more than strong news brands, you also need a robust and unified IT environment. For Mediahuis, the patchwork of digital platforms that had emerged after years of acquisitions increasingly stood in the way of seamless cooperation. The answer came in the form of a bold migration to one central Microsoft 365 tenant. Together with Inetum, the media group executed a complex digital relocation that now forms the foundation for its future ambitions.

Published : 16/02/2026

Since its founding in 2014, Mediahuis has grown into a leading European media group. With operations in Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Germany, the company manages a wide range of news brands, including De Standaard, De Telegraaf, and The Irish Independent. This expansion, driven by a strategy of acquisitions and digital acceleration, also introduced significant technological complexity: a patchwork of IT systems and separate Microsoft 365 tenants.

“Our growth strategy relies heavily on digitalization, which means we need to modernize our processes and workplace to stay relevant,” says Jonathan De Nil, System Engineer Digital Workplace at Mediahuis. Jonathan is part of the Technology & Product Studio (TPS), the overarching IT organization at Mediahuis comprising about 450 employees. “Within the Infra department, with roughly 80 colleagues, we were faced with the challenge of enabling smooth collaboration across different entities and countries.”

One tenant for borderless collaboration

The need for digital realignment was evident. As long as employees were spread across multiple tenants, digital walls continued to exist. “We wanted colleagues to stop switching environments just to share files or collaborate in Teams. We also noticed that each tenant was configured differently, which led to inconsistencies and confusion across the group. A centralized and standardized environment would solve that”, Jonathan explains. The goal of the consolidation was clear: one central group tenant functioning as the organization’s digital heartbeat, designed for greater ease of use and improved efficiency.

“By onboarding everyone onto a single tenant, we’re creating a unified address book. You can easily find colleagues, whether they’re in Amsterdam, Antwerp, or Dublin. The central tenant also enables us to share mail domains. We’re no longer bound by the technical limitations of which domain is tied to which tenant. Previously, we often had to disappoint departments or rely on workarounds, which were never ideal and came with their own restrictions. One tenant boosts internal collaboration and the use of shared mailboxes across different entities.”

This step was also essential for workplace management. Mediahuis has begun a major rollout of Microsoft Intune for laptops and smartphones, shifting device management entirely to the cloud. “That only works efficiently if all users are in the same tenant. Now we don’t have to create the same configuration six times, which saves us enormous time and ensures a consistent user experience across the entire group.”

Weekend sprint

L’ampleur de l’opération menée par Mediahuis était impressionnante. Une migration tenant-to-tenant pour transférer intégralement toutes les données, comptes et ressources concernés. Les chiffres parlent d’eux-mêmes: 136 noms de domaine différents, 1 351 canaux Teams, plus de 1 500 comptes utilisateurs et 930 boîtes aux lettres partagées.

À cela s’ajoutait une énorme quantité de données à relocaliser: 14,6 To d’e-mails et 33,5 To de données provenant de OneDrive. Comme Mediahuis opère dans le secteur de l’information, où la rapidité et la continuité sont vitales, il était impossible de «fermer la boutique» pour effectuer la migration. «Toute l’opération devait se dérouler en un seul week-end, avec le moins de temps d’arrêt possible », raconte Jonathan De Nil. Le coup d’envoi a été donné après 23 heures le vendredi soir, et l’équipe a mené une véritable course contre la montre pour tout finaliser avant le début de la nouvelle semaine.

Master Framework comme facteur de succès

Pour mener à bien cette opération à haut risque, Mediahuis a fait appel à Inetum et à son Master Framework unique. Ce cadre, spécialement conçu pour les migrations complexes, propose une planification automatisée qui minimise les risques. «Inetum a présenté la meilleure proposition grâce à ce plan multi-usage qui a déjà fait ses preuves.»

Le Migration Dashboard a également apporté une réelle tranquillité d’esprit. «Le tableau de bord nous donnait une visibilité en temps réel sur l’état de la migration, jusqu’au niveau des personnes et des appareils. Nous pouvions ainsi suivre la migration en direct et répondre rapidement et précisément à nos clients internes, tandis que les spécialistes techniques d’Inetum se concentraient sur l’exécution.» La Client Conversion, qui automatise les tâches sur les ordinateurs des collaborateurs pour que Outlook et Teams basculent sans problème vers le nouvel environnement, s’est révélée être un atout majeur.

Unique challenges

Beyond the time pressure and scale, the nature of the data itself presented unique complexities. At a media organization, data is much more than Word files and Excel sheets. “Editorial data is often highly fragmented,” Jonathan explains. “Teams chats contain a tremendous amount of essential information—from visuals and cartoons to weather images. We also found many sensitive documents, including financial information, in employees’ personal OneDrive environments.”

Accurately migrating chat history and the intricate permissions on shared documents was essential to ensure business continuity and protect confidentiality. There was also the complexity of merging accounts: many employees were active in multiple environments. Inetum had to consolidate everything carefully, with zero data loss.

Trust and transparency

Today, Mediahuis is fully reaping the benefits of its unified environment. IT support is simpler, collaboration flows more naturally, and the rollout of Intune is progressing rapidly. “This project laid the groundwork for our continued digital transformation”, Jonathan concludes. “Now that everything is consolidated into one central tenant, we can move forward with next steps, such as phasing out onpremise Active Directories and maximizing our cloudbased operations.” The successful migration demonstrates that even the most complex IT integrations, when supported by the right approach and expertise, can lead to a futureproof digital environment.

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