CRN Impact Awards: S5 Technology Group consolidates MidCoast Council

Port Macquarie-based S5 Technology Group was tapped by MidCoast Council to consolidate its IT systems.

The project helped S5 secure a nod in last week's CRN Impact Awards for 2023, with the best project in the Business Transformation category

MidCoast Council was formed in 2016 with the merger of three municipal councils around the New South Wales Hunter and mid-north coast regions, Gloucester Shire, Great Lakes and City of Greater Taree Council.

It also includes the region's water authority.

S5 was tapped to design and implement a new unified IT system for the council as part of a new centralised head office, replacing four separate networks and data centres across each entity.

The new system included a dual high availability data centre, enterprise network and enterprise security to cover some 80 IT-enabled sites across 195 towns, villages and localities.

The solution includes networking and data centre technology from Cisco and security infrastructure from Check Point, supplied by S5 through a full-stack security enterprise agreement.

S5 also transitioned MidCoast Council from MPLS technology to a mixture of communications towers acquired from the water authority, NBN and cellular services.

“After MidCoast Council’s merger of 3 former councils and 1 water authority, we had a mix of network, server and security topologies used." MidCoast Council senior network administrator Aaron Beard said.

"These were meshed together as best as possible, however, we knew we had to engage an experienced vendor to supply a design that will not only support the move from five existing head offices into one central location, but to also future proof our entire data centre, network and security infrastructure moving forward, as well as provide substantial speed and reliability improvements whilst realising cost savings for the organisation,” Beard added.

“S5 have been our trusted vendor in providing all the above and are continually supporting our journey in infrastructure technology, as we strive to also be a leader within the local government technology space.”

The migration from MPLS to the mixed network has helped MidCoast Council save more than $500,000 per year, while adopting Check Point Infinity Total Protection helped save the council more than $2 million in upfront costs for traditional security infrastructure.

S5 and MidCoast worked with Cisco on securing discounts from the vendor, while also receiving DNA Centre and Telemetry Appliances at no cost.

Cisco ANZ sales manager Brett Eliott said, “[Principal architect] Guy [Coble] and S5 Technology Group have been fantastic to partner with on the MidCoast Council project, they did everything and more that you expect from a Partner.

Guy and his team were able to really understand the customer’s business, their challenges and outcomes.

“Guy and S5 aligned the council’s requirements both technically and financially to enable them to transform the legacy environment seamlessly."

"This is what makes them a great partner to work with! Thank you for your partnership," Elliot said.