Tamworth Family Support Services

Transition to a Hybrid Workplace

As the world moves into a new normal after the Global Pandemic, the landscape of work and workplaces as we once knew them has changed. With hybrid work being a more common option for employees, it's important for businesses to seek advice and assistance around their IT infrastructure to support a secure and seamless transition for those working remote.

The Challenge

When Tamworth Family Support Services (TFSS) first engaged Cloudwize they had aged infrastructure that was inefficient and inflexible. They were seeking a technology partner who could assist them to make the transition to a modern workplace, allowing their staff the flexibility to work from anywhere, while still ensuring critical business data and user access was secured and managed, and that TFSS’s investment provided a cost-effective platform for the future.

Our Solutions

Cloudwize assisted TFSS with the procurement and deployment of endpoints, project managing the roll out to minimise user disruption. Most users were issued with laptops, while office desks were set up with a standard monitor, dock, keyboard and mouse arrangement to facilitate hot desking and optimise office space.

All users were set up using not-for-profit Microsoft 365 licensing allowing them to access the latest version of the Office suite as well as the built-in security of Endpoint Manager and Multi-Factor Authentication. This allowed Cloudwize to secure the fleet and push out group policy as a first step to taking TFSS serverless. It also meant that TFSS’s core platform met a minimum standard of MFA as per the Australian CyberSecurity’s Essential 8.

Support Planning

The Cloudwize team then worked with TFSS management and staff to develop a design for the Intranet that facilitated users’ ease of access to data and key information. This included colour coding the home page to reflect the core teams within the organisation and help users get where they needed to at a glance. Throughout this phase, there was regular communication with users about the upcoming changes and what it meant for them.

Platform Migration

Once that design was completed, Cloudwize and the TFSS project team were able to match the data stored on the aged server infrastructure with the new design and project managed its migration. Users left the office one afternoon using old infrastructure, returning the next morning with all data migrated and the new environment fully operational. As a result, user impacts due to the changes implemented was negligible. As part of this project, a separate backup solution that takes daily snapshots of hosted data was also deployed.

Infrastructure

The final phase was to decommission the server. All login and authentication roles performed by that infrastructure were transferred to the Microsoft Azure platform embedded with TFSS’ M365 licensing, allowing TFSS to leverage the investment in their licensing even further.

The Results

A significant improvement in user productivity, with staff now able to work from anywhere and with the same user experience as if they were in the office. Security was enhanced with no additional licensing costs, with the addition of MFA, Endpoint Manager and Azure Active Directory all included in core Microsoft licensing. Automated cloud hosted backup solution removed the human error factor. Lumpy cash flow negative investments in server infrastructure were no longer required. Server management and maintenance requirements disappeared. Risks associated with server hardware failure and/or end of life operating systems were removed.

Client Feedback

Cloudwize have been great to work with right from the start. All changes from the start were well planned and TFSS were fully supported by Cloudwize during and after implementation. Their continued support has been excellent.

In an ever changing digital world, the transitioning to a cloud-based service has ensured that TFSS remain a secure and productive workplace. The opportunity to allow for staff to adopt flexible work from home arrangements is invaluable for our organisation. The transition was invaluable when COVID 19 hit and staff had to work from home. The transition to a working from home environment was seamless.

I would like to thank the team for their responsive support throughout this process.

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As the world moves into a new normal after the Global Pandemic, the landscape of work and workplaces as we once knew them has changed. With hybrid work being a more common option for employees, it's important for businesses to seek advice and assistance around their IT infrastructure to support a secure and seamless transition for those working remote.

The Challenge

When Tamworth Family Support Services (TFSS) first engaged Cloudwize they had aged infrastructure that was inefficient and inflexible. They were seeking a technology partner who could assist them to make the transition to a modern workplace, allowing their staff the flexibility to work from anywhere, while still ensuring critical business data and user access was secured and managed, and that TFSS’s investment provided a cost-effective platform for the future.