Mosman Council taps Brisbane's Codify for Microsoft Azure migration

Brisbane-based cloud services provider Codify has delivered a Microsoft Azure infrastructure modernisation for Mosman Council in Sydney.

Much of the council's legacy on-premises infrastructure had been running on unsupported operating systems was reaching end-of-life.

The council also lacked disaster recovery capability and sufficient IT skills to manage the physical infrastructure.

It selected Codify for the project from a shortlist of partners in November 2023.

“What we heard from the market was Codify is focused on building long-term relationships with councils, not about one-time selling,” said James Qi, Mosman Council's manager of IT services.

Codify completed the implementation of a new Azure landing zone and migrated all of the council’s infrastructure in three months, starting in late November 2023.

“We are proud to count Mosman Council as a valued customer and delighted by the strong partnership fostered during their Azure migration,” said Ben Parker, director of Codify.

"By utilising Microsoft's robust programs, we were able to de-risk the migration project, offering both technical and financial support."

As well as solving for legacy applications, Codify addressed the council’s infrastructure issues.

Servers that were running production workloads were upgraded from old Windows Server 2008 R2—which reached end of support four years ago—to Windows Server 2019 or later.

“At first, I thought Codify would be like any other Microsoft CSP just supporting the infrastructure migration and infrastructure management. But they were applying their deep application expertise to help us get our legacy applications working," said Qi.

Codify also deployed Fortinet's FortiGate VM virtual firewalls in Azure, ensuring all client VPNs went through threat protection, site to site.

The firm integrated the Fortinet solution straight into Azure from logs feeding direct into Microsoft Sentinel, through to admin logs feeding into Microsoft Entra ID. 

The FortiGate VM architecture implemented by Codify went beyond a basic network virtual application implementation and included full integration with the Azure software defined networking infrastructure via Azure Route Server.

This allows Azure and the council’s LAN and WAN to dynamically learn from each other as the network grows and changes over time.

"Codify provides that deep expertise but also helps expand our understanding of best practices in cloud technology and infrastructure," said Qi.

"Codify has helped us acquire great insight into cloud optimisation techniques that generate real and immediate value for Mosman Council.”