Scenario
On 1 July 2021, City West Water and Western Water integrated to form a new water corporation for Melbourne’s CBD and rapidly-growing western region – Greater Western Water.
From an IT systems perspective, this required the consolidation of City West Water and Western Water systems into one Greater Western Water identity.
Together, City West Water and Western Water had extensive environments spanning multiple on-premises data centres, multiple Azure and Microsoft 365 tenants and various SaaS based business applications.
Consolidating into a single identity was essential to a seamless integration, supporting operational processes and procedures to continue as usual throughout the transition to Greater Western Water.
Solution
City West Water and Western Water were looking for an experienced partner to advise, design and implement a technical integration of their environments.
Arinco was engaged to conduct a series of workshops aimed at identifying the various integration options. The output of the workshops demonstrated several scenarios, each delivering different results based on time, cost, and level of integration.
Arinco recommended a staged approach, with non-critical migration activities postponed until after the 1 July cutover. This approach ensured that Greater Western Water was able to operate under its new identity while maintaining business-as-usual operations and minimising impact to its people.
Through this solution, the risk to Greater Western Water was minimised and the key business requirements were delivered with a clear plan for ongoing modernisation after the transition to one organisation.
Technical migration activity was focused on the key areas of:
- collaboration and productivity
- end-user computing
- identity and access management
- security and connectivity and,
- business applications.
Integration of the relevant Microsoft 365 platform components, Azure AD Integrated systems, Azure Virtual Desktop, Microsoft identities (Active Directory, Azure AD and Guest Accounts) and Microsoft Endpoint Management provided the platform for a unified Greater Western Water environment.
A collaborative approach was taken, with Arinco working alongside the Greater Western Water project team, made up of City West Water and Western Water representatives, to achieve the outcomes required.
Outcome
The technical expertise brought in by Arinco helped City West Water and Western Water to operate as Greater Western Water from 1 July 2021.
Staff were externally identifiable as employees of the new organisation while being able to continue their day-to-day roles with minimal impact.
“Arinco enabled us to reach critical integration milestones with a focus on minimising impact to our people and customers.” stated Jennifer Rebeiro, CIO, Greater Western Water
Further, hypercare in the form of post deployment support was included as part of the Arinco solution, however the careful planning and execution of the migration process meant much of the time allocated to hypercare could be re-allocated to providing further enhancements and modifications to the newly unified Greater Western Water.
The Arinco, City West Water and Western Water partnership was able to deliver:
- an integrated, externally facing Greater Western Water identity
- unified technology platforms and processes for over 1,200 staff members
- combined internal processes and policies reflective of a singular organisation\
Analysis was performed throughout the project to identify further opportunities for enhancement to the existing technology landscape. This has provided Greater Western Water with a technology roadmap to further modernise and future-proof their business in line with the overall integration opportunities.
“Arinco partnered with us to ensure that Greater Western Water came to life on 1 July 2021, they were with us every step of the way and across the cutover period. The technology cutover events were high quality and professionally delivered supporting seamless integration.” – Jennifer Rebeiro – CIO, Greater Western Water
