Client story How Insight helps Selwyn District Council achieve best practice

Facts at a glance

Client industry:

Local Government

Situation:

Headquartered in Rolleston near Christchurch, the Selwyn District Council (Selwyn DC) is the local government authority providing municipal services to a population of more than 60,000 people. The Council has some 410 Microsoft 365 users, a number which is set to grow; the Selwyn District is New Zealand’s fastest growing over the past decade.

For Selwyn DC, the challenge was ensuring the configuration of its Office 365 Platform and supporting infrastructure was robust, secure and met requirements in terms of governance and best practice, ahead of a planned migration from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams Calling.

Solution:

• A blueprint for service provisioning with sound security and governance practices
• Recommendations to ensure Office 365 is deployed and configured in line with industry best practice

Results:

• High-level roadmap based on the Council’s stated technology goals, to support the journey to cloud and a modern workplace.
• Office 365 Platform Assessment  recommendations and remediations to Azure Active Directory configurations, as well as Office 365 license allocations.
• Further guidance included advising the use of ‘least privilege’ access, Multi-Factor Authentication, blocking legacy authentication, and establishing an effective governance framework to guard future Office 365 workload adoption along with Microsoft 365 Defender integration.

Solution area:

Insight’s Supply Chain Optimisation solutions optimise and simplify your technology investments to drive greater business transformation

The path to cloud is beset with potential pitfalls, which is why the Selwyn District Council engaged with Insight for an Office 365 Platform Assessment. Through a series of analyses and evaluations, Insight has provided valuable guidance to the local government entity, delivering recommendations that enable Selwyn DC to implement best practices for configuration and security of its Microsoft Office 365 platform.

Headquartered in Rolleston near Christchurch, the Selwyn District Council (Selwyn DC) is the local government authority providing municipal services to a population of more than 60,000 people across 6 towns and a significant area of farmland. The Council has some 410 Microsoft 365 users, a number which is set to grow; the Selwyn District is New Zealand’s fastest growing over the past decade.

Situation

The New Zealand Government has prioritised the adoption of cloud technologies where possible, and at the same time, Local Councils are naturally progressing towards modern infrastructure and application use. That’s according to Selwyn DC Information Services Manager Neil Cookeson.

Moreover, there is a benefit in terms of reduced administrative overhead. “With on-premises deployments, when you install a service pack to fix an issue, you’ll find there are multiple potential options for solving various problems which inevitably arise. When you go into the cloud, that just isn’t a factor.”

"However, there is always risk involved in any migration; in our case, we wanted assurance of our Office 365 configuration and security,” Cookeson notes.

Solution

As a long-term provider of Microsoft Licensing Services and related consultancy to Selwyn DC, Cookeson says he knew exactly where to go. “We routinely get Insight in to make sure we are appropriately aligned with Microsoft’s requirements,” he notes. The Office 365 Platform Assessment gives us the additional arms-length view of our internal processes and configuration and helps us to remediate potential issues before they arise.”

Suitable for organisations taking their first steps towards an Office 365 implementation or those further down the track, Insight’s Office 365 Platform Assessment provides a blueprint for service provisioning with sound security and governance practices.

The assessment includes workshops with key business stakeholders, assessing the IT landscape and current cloud presence, identifying gaps, and making recommendations to bring the deployment to best practice standards.

“The value here is huge; if you persistently fail to get this right, there’s the risk of data loss, security vulnerabilities and potential for users to have inappropriate levels of access for their roles,” Selwyn DC Information Services Manager, Neil Cookeson.

Results

As part of the engagement, Insight provides a high-level roadmap based on the Council’s stated technology goals, to support it on the journey to cloud and a modern workplace.

Cookeson points out that configuration of key services can go out of alignment, particularly if short-term workarounds are made during daily business. “This is effectively avoided with input from the experts,” he adds.

Among the results of the most recent Office 365 Platform Assessment were recommendations and remediations to Azure Active Directory configurations, as well as around Office 365 license allocations.

Further guidance included advising the use of ‘least privilege’ access, Multi-Factor Authentication, blocking legacy authentication, and establishing an effective governance framework to guard future Office 365 workload adoption along with Microsoft 365 Defender integration.