Sanka began his career in environments where downtime was expensive and heavily regulated. For more than a decade, he designed IT infrastructure and managed on-premises messaging platforms from Exchange 2003 through 2016, Office 365 and OCS to Skype for Business, working first in financial services and later across other regulated environments.

The technology has changed. The engineering discipline hasn't.

THE HEALTHCARE M365 MIGRATION

For a large healthcare organisation, Sanka led the architecture and hands-on implementation of an enterprise Microsoft 365 migration and Active Directory security uplift.

His work included:

Microsoft 365: tenant architecture, mailbox and collaboration migration, coexistence and cutover
Identity: Active Directory security, PIM, Conditional Access and MFA
Governance: Purview sensitivity labels, retention, DLP, access reviews and audit controls
Delivery: strategy, architecture, build, testing and handover

The result: a modernised collaboration platform, stronger identity security and a migration designed to maintain operational continuity.

Q: What's the hardest part of moving a regulated healthcare environment to M365 without disrupting day-to-day operations?

Keeping hospitals running without a single hitch while locking down patient data is the tricky part. One bad move during a cutover can break clinical comms, so you have to plan every phase down to the last detail and test it to death before touching production.

FROM ON-PREM TO ZERO TRUST

In a separate two-year engagement, Sanka led a Microsoft 365 security and governance overhaul across identities, endpoints and data.

Working with Cyber Security, Risk and Compliance teams, he delivered:

Data protection: Purview, DLP, retention and Insider Risk Management
Endpoint security: Defender, Intune, CIS-aligned baselines and ASR
Identity governance: Entra ID, Conditional Access, PIM, access reviews and MFA

The result: measurable improvements in Secure Score and Compliance Score, CIS benchmark alignment and a governance model built to last beyond the engagement.

Q: How does your background in on-premises Exchange and regulated infrastructure shape the way you design cloud architectures today?

Managing old-school, high-stakes environments like Exchange 2003 teaches you respect for mission-critical systems. That background naturally sticks with you, treating security and stability as non-negotiable is just how I build Zero Trust clouds today.

THE GAP BETWEEN TECHNICAL DEPTH AND THE RIGHT OPPORTUNITY

Even with decades of experience, highly specialised technical expertise can be difficult to communicate through a generalist hiring process.

Before sansaino, finding enterprise cloud contracts meant explaining 18+ years of ICT experience to recruiters who didn't know on-prem Exchange from cloud infrastructure.

His experience points to a broader challenge for senior technical professionals. A CV can list technologies, certifications and years of experience, but it doesn't always capture the environments someone has worked in, the complexity they've managed, or the problems they've been trusted to solve.

For someone whose career spans Exchange 2003, regulated infrastructure, Microsoft 365 migration and Zero Trust security, that context matters.

WORK WITH SANKA

Need experienced cloud expertise for your next project? Work directly with Sanka to define the scope, technical approach and delivery requirements, from strategy through implementation.

VIEW SANKA'S FULL VERIFIED PROFILE