Customer Stories • < 1 minute read

Digital transformation drives City of Port Phillip forward

Published on

October 8, 2025

Business Challenges

The City of Port Phillip’s on-premises server room had become increasingly difficult to manage. Maintenance limitations due to heritage restrictions meant that the IT team could no longer rely on this space to support a growing portfolio of essential services. The site housed systems critical to day-to-day operations, and the physical constraints of the building made any kind of modernisation a logistical challenge.

At the same time, the council was under increasing strain to ensure 24/7 service continuity across more than 100 community services. The risk of outages was placing pressure on internal resources and making long-term planning more challenging.

The tipping point came when the ICT and Cloud Services team found a critical environmental risk in the same room as server racks. The heritage listing on the building meant structural changes were not an option, while there were potential health and safety risks for staff.

If the city’s racks went down, the whole city’s operations – including more than 100 community services – would be brought to a standstill. There was a need to better protect IT operations.

The team recognised that to meet the expectations of its constituents and internal stakeholders, the City of Port Phillip required an urgent and well-structured migration pathway – one that would deliver long-term security and resilience without impacting frontline operations.

Solution 

Interactive partnered with City of Port Phillip to deliver a multi-staged migration strategy that balanced the demand for speed with long-term transformation goals.

Rapid migration to colocation

As the risks around legacy infrastructure escalated, Interactive supported the relocation of systems from the on-premises server room to a secure colocation facility. This phase was delivered within three months of planning, with migration work completed over weekends to avoid any interruption to community services.

Interactive provided hands-on troubleshooting during this phase, including rapid response to unexpected incidents. When a core network switch failed late at night during the migration, Interactive had a replacement sourced, configured and operational within hours, maintaining critical business continuity.

Transition to private cloud

With the council’s systems stabilised, attention turned to a more strategic initiative: migrating to a managed private cloud. This phase involved re-architecting the existing environment, modernising legacy systems, and designing for future scalability. Interactive led the technical design, oversaw testing and validation, and provided continuous guidance throughout the 12-month process. The transition was completed without disruption to council operations.

Interactive also supported key infrastructure upgrades including uplifting disaster recovery services, the rollout of NetApp Keystone storage with full managed services, and implementation of 24/7 monitoring and incident response. These enhancements provided the council with a resilient, scalable and secure foundation for future growth.

As an all-encompassing outsourced IT managed services provider, Interactive Anywhere ensures robust support and proactive solutions for ongoing operational stability.

The team operates like a true one-stop shop across networking, hardware, cloud, support and project management.

Value

The transformation delivered measurable benefits almost immediately. Following the initial move to colocation, the City of Port Phillip saw a dramatic drop in major outages and incidents. Staff and end users quickly noticed performance improvements across core systems, with feedback from teams citing faster application speeds and more responsive systems.

By moving to a modern private cloud environment, the council gained flexibility and scalability while removing the risks associated with maintaining legacy infrastructure in a constrained physical setting. The solution allowed the council’s ICT and Cloud Services team to redirect its focus from maintenance to innovation.

With core systems running more efficiently and securely, internal teams are free to plan long-term strategic initiatives including multi-cloud adoption and AI-driven service enhancements.

In addition, Interactive helped improve the security posture, removing end-of-life hardware and implementing network security on firewalls.

Just as importantly, the migration process helped establish a trusted and collaborative relationship between Interactive and the City of Port Phillip. What started as a high-pressure infrastructure challenge became a shared success story built on transparency, responsiveness and mutual respect.