More state agencies adopt MS cloud suites

Western Australia's Department of Sport and Recreation is building on its successful migration to Microsoft Azure, with plans to adopt business intelligence services from the vendor.

The department announced that it has been able to replace nine physical servers from its remote and regional offices with ExpressRoute connectivity to the Azure cloud, directly connecting each regional office with its main location in Leederville, Perth.

The department started working with Azure to support the adoption of Office 365, but has now started looking to further utilise the services that come with the platform.

As part of these efforts, the department plans to utilise Microsoft's Power BI data analytics and visualisation platform.

"Not only so that we're able to make better decisions but also to tell a better story of what we've done with our investment, both in technology and the public money that's been invested in our department towards the delivery of vital services for the community," the department's CIO said in a blog post.

NSW's Office of Environment and Heritage has meanwhile completed an 18-month migration to Office 365 and Microsoft's Enterprise Mobility Suite to help better support its roughly 2000 field workers.

The office's CIO, Chris Fletcher, said the focus of the migration project included mobility as well as a push to improve productivity and collaboration.

To facilitate this, the office has adopted Skype for Business and SharePoint, as well as Microsoft's Enterprise Mobility Suite.

"We made the decision to undertake a homogeneous path around Microsoft in order to make sure that everything works well together and, in doing so, we've been able to optimise our outcomes," Fletcher said.

"When we were challenged with providing services to more of our cluster, we've been able to leverage our existing arrangement [and] adjust to scale and, although our headcount has increased roughly 20%, we have been able to provide a major uplift in capability to other parts of the agency."

Image courtesy WA Department of Sport and Recreation