Calibre One migrates NDIS caregiver Somerville Community Services to Office365, Telstra fibre

Managed services provider Calibre One has secured an Office 365 deployment with Darwin-based disability services provider Somerville Community Services.

Calibre One replaced Somerville’s on-premises server to Office 365 and legacy telephony to Telstra Calling for Office 365, which is also supported by Telstra’s triple-redundant fibre connectivity and third-party mobility solutions.

Somerville is a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) provider supporting some 65 participants, and is staffed by some 200 staff.

The cloud migration was prompted by the power outages caused by severe tropical cyclone Marcus in 2018, which had taken down some 430 power lines, which blacked out some 26,500 properties at the time.

“We lost power in the office for a week, so I had to carry that server to our other office — and it wouldn't turn on,” Somerville manager of ICT and systems administration Jannie Bacus said.

“I restored it to a virtual server and got us up and running but it was very much a, ‘never again!’ moment for me.”

Somerville at the time provided care through a manual, paper-only process that was carried out face-to-face in the office and at client sites, with some staff without access to email.

The project was completed before the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, with Somerville migrating to Calibre One’s cloud managed services, and had fibre internet deployed to connect its three sites.

Calibre One chief executive Darren Gore said, “Providing enterprise fibre services was a big underpinning. Everything before was standard business or consumer NBN service.”

“There have been many outages elsewhere in the Territory since we installed Somerville’s network but, with Telstra, they now have redundant fibre paths.”

Also provided to Somerville were equipment for wi-fi, a SharePoint intranet with OneDrive, cloud backup, managed services for telephony helpdesk, and cybersecurity, which included mobile device management.

Bacus said Somerville’s connectivity and digital collaboration through Microsoft Teams and universal email transformed how the organisation cared for its vulnerable clients, while improving data collection and privacy protection satisfied regulatory obligations. Bacus is also confident of Somerville’s redundant and resilient IT architecture being able to “weather any blow”.

“[The migration] has changed the trajectory of this organisation – the project laid the foundations for future innovation,” Bacus said.

“It’s changed people’s expectations of what they can do and their comfort levels around the new systems.

“We met our immediate goals in major improvements such as communication, giving access and flexibility to staff and, longer term, we have the scale and foundation to provide tools to staff and support growth. None of that would have been possible without the solutions that Calibre One built for us.”