The Challenge
VendorPanel is ANZ’s largest tender and procurement platform, hosting nearly 70% of all tenders across government and public sector organisations in the region. When VendorPanel (now part of Unimarket) decided to consolidate from Google Workspace onto Microsoft 365, the stakes were high: any disruption to email, files, or collaboration would directly impact a platform that Australian and New Zealand government agencies rely on daily.
The business needed more than a lift and shift migration. They wanted a true consolidation: email, collaboration, identity, licensing, and an existing Azure subscription all brought into one coherent Microsoft environment. The project had to be clean, with no lost mail, no broken team workflows, and no surprises for staff who were busy running a critical national procurement platform.
VendorPanel ran a rigorous three round tender process, inviting ten of APAC’s best Microsoft 365 consulting firms to compete for the engagement. Evocate was shortlisted to the top five in round one, advanced to the top three in round two, and was ultimately selected as the preferred vendor in round three.
What Evocate Delivered
In 2025, Evocate planned and executed a single, end-to-end migration and consolidation engagement:
- Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 migration: email, calendars, contacts, and files migrated with zero data loss and minimal downtime
- SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams deployment: collaboration workspaces built to replace Google Drive and Google Chat, with structured information architecture suited to VendorPanel’s operational teams
- Identity consolidation: unified Entra ID (Azure AD) tenant bringing together Microsoft 365 and Azure identities into one managed directory
- Licensing alignment: Microsoft 365 and Azure licensing rationalised and consolidated under one commercial relationship, replacing the split Google + Microsoft model
- Azure subscription configuration: existing Azure resources provisioned, reviewed, and aligned with the consolidated tenant for coherent cloud workload management
- Cutover coordination: phased migration approach with clear communication to staff, minimising disruption to day to day operations during the transition window
Outcomes
VendorPanel + Unimarket now operates on a single, consolidated Microsoft platform. Email and collaboration live in Microsoft 365, identity is unified under Entra ID, and Azure is in place as a coherent cloud foundation. Licensing is aligned and managed in one relationship rather than split across providers. Staff work from an integrated toolset: Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, without the friction of switching between Google and Microsoft ecosystems.
The migration was completed with minimal downtime, and the platform’s government and public sector users experienced no service disruption. The tender process itself validated Evocate’s capability: out of ten competing consultancies, Evocate was the one VendorPanel trusted with a platform that handles the majority of ANZ’s public procurement.
Why This Matters
Running across two ecosystems adds cost, friction, and risk, especially for a platform as critical as VendorPanel. Consolidating onto Microsoft 365 gives a software business a coherent platform: better integration between email, files, and collaboration; simpler administration through a single identity directory; and a clear cloud foundation in Azure for future workloads.
The hard part is the migration itself, where care and planning matter most. Evocate’s role was to move VendorPanel cleanly, so the team gained a better platform without feeling the join. Being selected through a three round competitive tender, and winning against nine other consultancies, is the proof that Evocate’s migration capability stands up to scrutiny at the highest level.
What This Means for Other Clients
VendorPanel + Unimarket demonstrates that Evocate can be trusted with mission critical platform migrations for organisations where service continuity is non negotiable. If your business is running across multiple cloud ecosystems and the friction is slowing your teams down, Evocate can plan and execute a clean consolidation, even when the stakes are national.
