Area9 recently partnered with a South Australia Government Department to optimise their operations through a twopart automated migration project. The Department was seeking a cost-effective, secure solution that would speed up operations, provide seamless accessibility for remote staff and external stakeholders, as well as meet Government requirements.
“We were dealing with outdated solutions that weren’t suitable for modern challenges. Since our department collaborates with a lot of different staff and external vendors a major area we needed to improve was accessibility from various locations.”
IT Stakeholder, South Australia Government Department
The customer engaged Area9 for a migration of Atlassian solutions to Amazon Web Services (AWS), a database migration to PostgresSQL and ongoing IT support. “We put the project to tender and Area9 came out on top. Their team was able to zero in on the business outcomes we wanted to achieve and develop the most effective solution. We were so pleased with how it went that we engaged them to complete additional projects for us.”
Migration to PostgreSQL: Reducing costs and boosting performance
The South Australia Government Department was looking for a cost-effective database solution for the Atlassian applications, with a more flexible licensing structure. By running PostgresSQL on AWS, our experts were able to deliver the flexibility and scalability they needed. Migrating their database to PostgresSQL provided better self-management, the ability to shut down non-production environments when not required to save costs, no licensing costs, and the ability to apply change at the pace required.
As a well-known relational database, PostgresSQL is a costeffective, scalable, and highly flexible solution. This migration will save the Government Department licensing costs while delivering the security, performance, and efficiency they need to improve business operations across on-premises and cloud-based infrastructures.
We migrated the data out of their existing system and into the new one while ensuring it was 100% verified. Our experts worked closely with the Government Department’s in-house team to ensure the migration met all requirements.
Migrating Atlassian solutions to AWS for better collaboration
The South Australia Government Department was already running their own AWS cloud environment in-house and decided to migrate their Atlassian solutions to this for greater control over the environment.
“The existing solution wasn’t providing the accessibility our staff and external vendors needed to collaborate and use issue tracking, project planning, and sprint planning from outside the organisation. Since many of our larger business areas collaborate with external vendors, this was causing a lot of frustration, as well as productivity and communication issues.”
By migrating their JIRA and Confluence services to AWS, the Department is able to ensure everyone is on the same page with documentation and task tracking. Whether their employees are working from home or they’re collaborating with external stakeholders, they now have easy access while maintaining security with multi-factor authentication.
“The migration allows greater vendor collaboration which is a huge plus for us. We can now set up projects and spaces with these teams without needing to set them up with VPN access like we did before. When you’re operating in the same environment as other organisations with similar email addresses, access can become complicated and time consuming if you don’t have the right setup.”
Area9 is a Select Amazon Partner on the services path, a Public Sector Consulting Partner with Amazon, and a Gold Solution Partner with Atlassian—positioning us as a perfect fit for an Atlassian migration to Amazon services. Our partnership with Amazon gives us access to Amazon Solution Architects who validate the solutions and make sure they’re best practice.
“The Area9 expert we collaborated with had a wealth of knowledge about Atlassian and she was able to get up to speed with our internal AWS environment fast. She hit the ground running and overcame the challenges of the migration very quickly.”
With their Atlassian solutions now in AWS, the Department is also able to create non-production environments when they need to. When these environments are not needed, they can simply shut them down to reduce compute costs.
Taking a window of opportunity to ensure minimal downtime
The Government Department needed to maintain business continuity during the migration, so our specialists worked closely with their team to ensure minimal downtime. We completed a smooth migration in one afternoon as a result of comprehensive testing and customer validation.
“Area9 has a lot of experience and lessons under their belt that brought a lot of value to the migrations. In my experience, they’re also extremely customer-focused, which makes the process a lot smoother. For this reason, we’re looking forward to our ongoing engagement with them.”