Case Study – Mornington Peninsula Shire

Business Overview

Mornington Peninsula Shire is a local government body, an established council since 1995 and is a combination of three other councils in existence since the time of federation.

Mornington Peninsula currently services an existing customer base of approximately 97,000 rate payers in its city, supporting homes and properties, businesses, the environment, community depots, the library and every general council activity.

Their stake holders are not only the general public but also their internal staff, consisting of around 1000 people, that facilitate the backend applications for services such as food deliveries, activities run for the community including health services, building and planning, roads maintenance and transport services.

Challenges

In 2007 Mornington Peninsula Shire recognised that with a growing customer base and expanding services being provided, they were becoming short of space for servers and had an inadequate data storage and recovery system in place. With the requirement to consolidate their infrastructure into a more compact environment, Mornington Peninsula Shire needed to ensure that it would also provide a more reliable system in place.

“We were experiencing management issues and lack of space running 40-50 physical servers”, says Peter Ibbotson, Network Administrator at Mornington Peninsula Shire.

Mornington Peninsula Shire needed to improve their business procedures should anything ever fail; disaster recovery had to be a faster and more manageable process. The existing leased equipment was becoming obsolete and due to be replaced. As such, the new solution had to guarantee scalability, security and adaptability for overall better management.

“In searching for a solution, we wanted to make sure we had minimal physical servers on site and decrease the amount of hardware to make better use of IT support staffs’ time. In doing so we could refocus our attention to increase customer service, minimise the costs involved and impact on the environment”, says Peter.

With the solution requirements determined by Mornington Peninsula’s IT Manager, Brendon Cheshire and Peter Ibbotson, the challenge faced was acquiring the best solution using limited government funding that would virtualise their systems securely and allow more time for productivity.

The Thomas Duryea Solution

Having seen an existing solution being utilised in other councils, Mornington Peninsula decided to approach Thomas Duryea Consulting based on their reputation and experience within the council space.

Thomas Duryea’s solution was implemented in approximately three weeks and involved a complete replacement of the existing equipment and software upgrades. The solution involved installing new Dell hardware which resulted in an 80% reduction in servers. By implementing VMware and EMC, Mornington Peninsula’s systems became significantly more efficient.

“These changes really improved performance, increased our storage capabilities and made things much easier to manage internally”, says Ibbotson.

Installing better equipment was found to enhance performance and enable better processes to be put in place for disaster recovery. In addition, the solution provided a reliable and more stable infrastructure as well as a reduction in costs for power usage. The Thomas Duryea solution was designed to be flexible and adaptable, allowing Mornington Peninsula staff to manage storage upgrades which they have recently completed quite easily, three years post the initial replacement.

Thomas Duryea Consulting planned and managed the entire process, from concept through to implementation with minimal disruption or down time as a large proportion of the implementation was carried out remotely and out of hours. Whilst no internal staffing restructure was required, Thomas Duryea Consulting’s approach to the project was customer focused with involvement of staff along the way. The project included knowledge transfer sessions and training, in addition ensuring there was a post debrief and that education was readily available.

“Although our customers see no difference, we have really felt the benefits. The better equipment and performance has increased productivity and enabled us to function more efficiently”, says Ibbotson.

Summary

Mornington Peninsula Shire had an aged and saturated infrastructure that was inefficient and difficult to manage.

To ensure they were functioning at full capacity and better utilising resources, Mornington Peninsula Shire required a complete systems overhaul in both hardware and procedures. Thomas Duryea Consulting provided a solution which minimised the use of hardware onsite and ensured better disaster recovery options were in place whilst being adaptable and highly cost effective.

“We now have better equipment that takes up less space yet provides more storage and faster performance with the capacity for adding more services down the track”, boasts Ibbotson.

“It’s much easier now to manage things internally, we can focus our efforts into other areas without worrying about adequate disaster recovery or any infrastructural changes for another three years”.

Thomas Duryea Consulting has an ongoing involvement with Mornington Peninsula Shire, providing support and advice on any systems refreshing required. Their solution makes Mornington Peninsula Shire one of the only few councils that are now 100% virtualised.