Scenario
Port Otago, situated along the picturesque Otago Harbour on New Zealand’s South Island, stands as a vital hub in the nation’s economic landscape. Operating around the clock, Port Otago relies heavily on robust technology to manage sensitive communications and ensure the safety of its workforce and third-party stakeholders.
However, in past years, the port has grappled with challenges related to visibility into its on-premises IT infrastructure and the dependability of third-party applications. To bolster their IT infrastructure and enhance resilience, Port Otago sought a strategic partner to facilitate their migration to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.
Solution
Arinco was selected as Port Otago’s partner of choice due to our deep DevOps expertise and our collaborative approach, working alongside customer teams to ensure the best technological solutions are implemented.
Given the nature of operating a harbour, safety standards and protocols are of utmost importance. A key consideration for the migration project was the time required to migrate and ensuring a smooth transition as critical workloads were responsible for monitoring harbour equipment, which ensured the safety of Port Otago’s personnel.
Another challenge faced was the time required to spin up new resources, due to reliance on third-party applications, creating new VMs would often take 24-48hours. Port Otago maintains a strong commitment to safety and governance, ensuring the creation of resources in a suitable environment and granting appropriate access to designated staff members was key to the solution.
With these key considerations in mind, it was important that infrastructure be managed with checks and balances, so it was Arinco’s Azure Done RightTM (ADR) offering that was most appealing. ADR was developed to support customers in constructing the right Azure foundations, ensuring a safe, stable, and scalable platform. ADR leverages infrastructure as code (IaC), DevOps practices, and Continuous Integration and Continuous Development (CI/CD) methodologies to ensure a robust and efficient deployment process.
Arinco worked with Port Otago to understand their current infrastructure, provide guidance on migrating based on Microsoft’s Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) and develop a migration roadmap. The strategy was grounded in Microsoft’s Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF), providing a solid foundation for the migration plan.
Arinco implemented Azure landing zones and critical resources which paved the way for a smooth transition of workloads. Seventeen critical virtual machines were migrated to Azure and two native Azure services were deployed to support SFTP via Azure Blob SFTP file transfer and file shares via Azure Files. A finance system was re-built in Azure which leveraged Azure SQL, removing the overhead of server management and improving archiving and reporting for accounting teams. Applications that needed to be accessed over public internet have been protected with Web Application Firewalls. All newly provisioned Azure resources were meticulously managed through code using Bicep, while automation streamlined resource access and code-based Azure policies enforced compliance.
“The Team at Arinco have been instrumental in modernising our environment, thinking and IT practices. Their attention to detail around documentation and implementation is of a very high level. They worked collaboratively with us through each stage to deliver an outcome that we are proud of. This is just the beginning of our partnership with them and a step towards a better future here at Port Otago”
– Scott Mosley, Senior Cloud Platforms Lead, Port Otago
Outcome
Port Otago had aspirations to migrate to the cloud over the last few years and the Arinco team were able to accomplish this in three months.
Where it previously took the Port a couple of hours or days to deploy a new server – a virtual machine could be spun up in mere minutes due the DevOps frameworks put in place. Teams now enjoy the agility of creating new environments and landing zones, providing them with more time to focus on business-critical activities.
Remote workers benefit from enhanced system accessibility through Azure Bastion, while the centralisation of firewall and log management in Azure has improved infrastructure visibility.
The consolidation of documentation within Azure DevOps simplifies resource deployment through code, as well as provides easy access to information pertaining to the Azure environment, streamlining resource discovery for teams.
“We know public cloud is set to bring massive dividends to Aotearoa New Zealand over the next few years, adding around $21 billion to the economy by 2026. Boosting productivity and the capabilities of our critical infrastructure are essential for Aotearoa to reach that potential, and that’s why the work of partners like Arinco is absolutely key. The more they support customers like Port Otago to make the most of cloud technologies, the more our whole country succeeds” – Vanessa Sorenson, Chief Partner Officer, Microsoft ANZ
What’s Next?
Port Otago’s collaborative journey with Arinco in their Azure migration is set to continue. Opportunities for modernisation, such as leveraging Azure Virtual Desktop services and modernising the Port’s data platform have already been identified. These enhancements are providing the foundation required for future innovation and optimisation for Port Otago.
If you would like to find out more about Arinco’s Azure Done Right™ offering, view more here.
