A four-month consolidation of two organisations' IT systems, an Internet of Things infrastructure to help update air conditioning systems and a deployment of Microsoft Teams Calling to support a healthcare provider’s COVID-19 testing and vaccination centres are the finalists in the Modernising Infrastructure category of the 2022 CRN Impact Awards.
The three CRN Business Transformation Impact Award finalists are:
- Arinco’s consolidation of Greater Western Water's IT environments
- DiUS’s IoT solution for managing Seeley International’s air-conditioning systems
- VISITS’ Microsoft Teams Calling deployment for Eastern Access Community Health COVID-19 testing and vaccination centres
Arinco consolidates Greater Western Water's IT environments
Melbourne-based water utilities City West Water and Western Water merged in July 2021 to form Greater Western Water (GWW) to form a new water corporation to service the city's CBD and rapidly growing western region.
Crucial to the new utility's merger was the integration of the two different IT systems into a single environment, with Arinco brought in to provide advisory services, design and implementation in less than four months - in time for the merger's completion.
GWW was bringing together multiple on-premises data centres, Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 tenants and a variety of software-as-a-service business applications, as well as two separate IT systems, IT teams, chief information officers and different structures.
Arinco had to complete the task while also ensuring it didn't compromise the user experience for the combined utility's 580,000 customers and 1200 employees.
A staged migration resulted in non-critical activities postponed until after the cutover date to reduce risk while delivering business requirements.
Upon completion, GWW's new combined IT environment resulted in reduced overheads, with the savings reinvested in the business to reduce overheads. Arinco predicted that customers will also see reduced annual bills.
GWW also saw usability and employee satisfaction improve. Device upgrades have enabled remote workers to get regular, cloud-based updates wherever they are.
Arinco is also a finalist for the 2022 CRN Impact Awards Workforce Empowerment Award.
DiUS helps Seeley International remotely update its air-conditioning systems with IoT
Australian air conditioning and ducted gas heating manufacturer Seeley International sought to update its internet of things (IoT) infrastructure to improve its security, quality control and deliver over-the-air updates to its cooling systems already installed in residential properties across the world.
The company wanted to move beyond reliance on just technician site visits and it recognised the IoT solution would help achieve that goal. Seeley also wanted to look ahead into the future and engage with a partner to help support current and future products, help establish a framework, and have credibility and capability in IoT.
Seeley turned to Melbourne-based DiUS for the refresh, first evaluating the existing IoT solution to see what improvements can be made, and then later helping lay the foundations by developing new firmware, improving security and more.
DiUS evaluated Seeley’s cloud infrastructure to ensure AWS services had been engineered to allow for growth and scale, and to review security, data optimisation and resource usage. Its recommendations were a new firmware, an updated mobile application, new IoT devices and more backend work to form a foundation to spur product evolution.
DiUS also bolstered security between mobile devices and the AWS services, registered devices with AWS IoT Core, implemented proper continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) with infrastructure as code, and enabled the ability to update their devices over the air.
The new firmware now allowed Seeley to easily identify and resolve internal problems, in addition to the over the air update functionality. This resulted in a 20 percent reduction in warranty or customer issues, as well as a reduction in carbon footprint as technicians have less need to go on site.
Seeley is now also looking to enter new regions such as Europe and the US following the improvements, citing a greater level of confidence with the device security and reduced development costs for the system as a whole.
VISITS deploys Microsoft Teams Calling to EACH's COVID-19 testing and vaccination centres
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted Melbourne-based healthcare services provider Eastern Access Community Health (EACH) to immediately roll out a network of new testing and vaccination centres.
The workers at the centres were required to make and receive phone calls, so a solution was sought to complement EACH's existing Microsoft Teams account. EACH had tried another solution, but found it did not meet the organisation's functional needs and was also expensive to operate.
After deciding to go with Microsoft Teams Calling, Melbourne MSP VISITS was the first to respond to the request, given a deadline of 48 hours to go live. VISITS also worked with unified communications vendor Access4 to deploy the infrastructure, leveraging its SASBOSS platform.
VISITS used Access4 services like FastPort, which allows for numbers to be routed correctly before porting and Automated Microsoft Teams provisioning, which allowed for a more seamless process.
The project was completed within the 48-hour window with Access4's services and migration being done outside office hours. The solution was later implemented to succeeding clinic rollouts and for a fleet of testing buses, as well as for EACH staff working remotely.
VISITS said the solution was also between 60 to 80 percent cheaper compared to a traditional telephony platform, depending on each site EACH opened.
Announcing the rest of the CRN Impact Award finalists and winners
Look out next week for CRN announcements detailing the rest of the finalists in the 2022 CRN Impact Awards.
The CRN Impact Awards winners will be revealed and celebrated on stage at the gala awards ceremony and dinner on August 25th at the Sheraton Grand Mirage Resort on the Gold Coast, as part of the CRN Pipeline 2022 conference.
The awards ceremony and dinner will be an opportunity for finalists to share their success with CRN journalists and the wider channel community and to network with Australia’s IT channel award winners. It will also be an opportunity for non-finalists to learn which channel partners kicked meaningful goals for customers in the last year, and meet them in-person.
Channel partners that attend the CRN Pipeline conference from August 23-26 at the same location can also network with Australia’s IT channel leaders and immerse themselves in top-class talks and roundtables about key business challenges and opportunities including staff shortages and hiring, economic outlook and key growth prospects.
Attend this year's premier channel awards, networking and strategic talk-fest - see the CRN Impact Awards and CRN Pipeline 2022 agenda.
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