Jason Flynn, CIO Tourism Australia
Having started their digital journey to better enable a relatively small workforce of around 200 people globally to deliver big projects and outcomes, Tourism Australia had high expectations for its technology deliverables. So, they brought in the Cloud Collective(Alliance association of Antares Solutions, Quorum Systems and Modality) to review their implementation to identify any gaps holding them back from unlocking the value of digital working.
Overview
Ready to embrace the benefits of cloud computing, Tourism Australia had implemented Microsoft Azure and Office 365 to support their new hybrid approach combining on-premise with Cloud technology.
However, post-deployment they encountered some challenges to fully exploit the promise of a high level of security, mobility and productivity available in the platform.
Tourism Australia asked the Cloud Collective to investigate and deliver an achievable strategy that would help them remediate issues and obtain maximum value from their Cloud services.
The Cloud Collective performed a 360-degree discovery. Their findings led to a range of improvements resulting in a new level of security, usability and adoption within Tourism Australia.
Challenge
Tourism Australia is the Australian government agency responsible for marketing Australia internationally to attract visitors for leisure and business events.
Aligning with the Australian government digital transformation agenda, Tourism Australia had taken steps on its digital journey by implementing Microsoft Azure and Office 365 to enable a more mobile and collaborative workforce.
Realising the unfulfilled potential of the solutions capability across security, usability and functionality following the initial implementation, Tourism Australia’s CIO, Jason Flynn, approached Cloud Collective.
Some of the internal challenges Tourism Australia faced included:
- Slower than expected user uptake
- Implementing advanced security tools available in O365/EM+S
- Underutilised Cloud services and forecast billing
- Glitches affecting staff productivity and performance
Solution
The Cloud Collective team began with a full audit of the existing environment, including:
- discussions with key stakeholders
- interviews with staff
- technical evaluation
- security scoring
- a risk matrix
- gap analysis
“Cloud Collective brought people in to transfer knowledge and upskill my team and show them what it will look like when we’re not worrying about servers and switches and engaging with the business on what’s really important to them.”
Jason Flynn, CIO Tourism Australia
This resulted in a series of recommendations to elevate the environment from where it was to where it needed to be.
Working to an agreed plan, timeframe and budget, the team drew on their extensive breadth of knowledge to perform sequential remediation activities that would deliver value and upgrade security fast. This included vast improvements across the Azure design, Office 365, and enterprise mobility and security.
Collaborating with staff, the Cloud Collective also engaged in extensive knowledge sharing to upskill Tourism Australia’s internal team.
“Cloud Collective gave really good insights as to where the gaps were, and why we weren’t seeing the uptake and responsiveness out of the environment that we should have been.”
Jason Flynn, CIO Tourism Australia
Result
With an enhanced and refined version of their original deployment, Tourism Australia is now able to enjoy the real benefits of working in the cloud.
“I no longer lose sleep worrying because I now have greater confidence in our security posture. To know we are up 24/7 with no more outages, we can turn our attention to doing better work for our business.”
Jason Flynn, CIO Tourism Australia
Their security posture has evolved from an Enterprise Level 3 to an Enterprise Level 5 – meaning they now utilise Microsoft’s advanced cyber security and threat protection features.
The remediation has enabled the organisation to achieve greater value for money, with the ability to leverage an increased number of features to improve user experience and internal capabilities.
Instead of fighting with the system, staff are now witnessing real results in uptime, productivity and collaboration – leading to significant improvements in use and adoption.
What’s Next?
With a stable cloud platform aligned to best practice, Tourism Australia is now future ready and able to explore exciting new possibilities to enhance their digital transformation journey.
Cloud Collective continues to work with the organisation to augment their capabilities and keep internal staff abreast of new developments in digital and cloud technologies.
With just a few legacy systems left on premise, Tourism Australia now plans to migrate more of their systems to the cloud, and open more potential for their highly mobile, globally distributed, workforce.
