Azure Case Studies
CASE STUDIES
NEDBANK
NEDBANK | Customer Story 1
Customer Challenge: Nedbank needed a “safe space” where employees could experiment with Azure technologies without impacting the production environment.
Partner response/solution: Netsurit / Inobits built a new Azure tenant to house a “sandbox” environment. A solution was implemented to enable automated creation and lifecycle management of individual employee sandboxes. An employee would request an environment using a Power App which would trigger a Logic App that would get the required approvals and then provision a complete sandbox for the employee. After a pre-determined period of time, the sandbox would be automatically removed. The solution utilised Power Platform, Azure DevOps, Azure Blueprints and other Azure governance features.
Key benefits: The solution enabled rapid Azure skills development in the Nedbank team which facilitated adoption of Azure production solutions. Users could use their sandboxes for prototyping and testing solutions which speeded up production projects. Nedbank could also use the sandbox environment to evaluate third-party solutions before bringing them into production. All of the above contributed to massive expansion of the Nedbank Azure footprint in 2020-2021.
– 23 November, 2020
NEDBANK | Customer Story 2
Customer Challenge: Customer has an on-premises Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) based on Citrix technologies that is used by 4000+ users to access Nedbank services and data. The existing VDI solution is expensive to run, would require major investment to expand and is not meeting the performance or functionality goals of the organization.
Partner response/solution: Netsurit / Inobits proposed replacing the existing on-premises VDI with an Azure solution. They positioned both Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (CVAD) in Azure. Pilot environments were deployed for both AVD and CVAD which allowed Nedbank to thoroughly evaluate these solutions. Nedbank is now planning a large-scale production implementation of CVAD in Azure to provide VDI services to 1000’s of users.
Key benefits: The CVAD in Azure solution moves another key on-premises workload to Azure which increases the ROI of the Azure investment. Putting VDI in Azure will make the solution more cost-effective, secure, scalable and flexible compared to the on-premises infrastructure.
– 15 April, 2021
STANDARD BANK
STANDARD BANK
Customer Challenge: Standard Bank is undertaking a massive move of on-premises workloads into Azure. A major challenge is to enable efficient operations around Azure services that will reduce operational effort, improve efficiency, reduce costs, improve security and reduce the time to delivery of new solutions. The Azure operational processes and tools were not integrated into those used to manage the existing on-premises infrastructure which made it difficult to achieve the goals of the Azure implementation.
Partner response/solution: Netsurit / Inobits staffed a Azure cloud engineering team which implemented solutions for operational management of the Azure estate. Some of the changes implemented included a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) for Azure resources which integrated into the existing CMDB for on-premises. Fully automated provisioning of new resources via Azure DevOps was implemented. The process to create new resources was integrated into the existing Remedy ITSM system; this will allow administrators and developers to initiate the provisioning of Azure workloads and environments through self-service, with approval workflows and updating of the CMDB. Netsurit / Inobits resources also implemented Azure security services to better detect the workloads and data in Azure, as well as governance controls such as Blueprints, policies, roles, monitoring and cost-management to ensure the Azure environment complied with operational requirements.
Key benefits: The automation, security and governance solutions implemented by Netsurit / Inobits consultants greatly improved the operational efficiency of Azure solutions in Standard Bank; this reduced operational effort, reduced costs, improved security and allowed faster solution delivery, while integrating better with the existing IT management processes and tools. All of the above increased the confidence of Standard Bank in Azure technologies which helped drive a massive increase in Azure adoption in 2020-2021.
– 25 February, 2021
SELECT PPE
SELECT PPE
Customer Challenge: Select PPE had a server infrastructure at a third-party hosting provider. The selected infrastructure was not cost-effective, scalable or flexible enough to meet the changing needs of a growing business. The core business of the company is e-commerce so the infrastructure needs to be extremely reliable, secure and able to adjust to sudden increases in transactions
Partner response/solution: Netsurit / Inobits created a business case to show that Azure would offer the best solution to the requirements. A migration plan was developed and executed to move the workloads from the hosted environment to an Azure IaaS solution. Care was taken to minimize business disruption. Azure networking and security resources were implemented to provide reliable and secure access to applications. Once the workloads were in Azure a process was started to optimize the environment using Azure capabilities to provide high-availability and scaling. Azure workloads implemented included Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), Azure Front Door, Azure Application Gateway and SQL Server.
Key benefits: The new Azure solution provided additional performance and scalability that resolved serious capacity problems that had previously plagued the e-commerce application. Users could easily access applications over Azure Virtual Desktop which was invaluable during the COVID-19 lockdown. The high-availability and reliability components made the solution more resilient against failures. The company is now set up for further business expansion using the Azure solution that is now in place.
– 11 June, 2021
THE STATE SECURITY AGENCY (SSA)
THE STATE SECURITY AGENCY (SSA)
Customer Challenge: As a key component of the security cluster in the South African National Government, the State Security Agency (SSA) needs to be extremely vigilant and careful about security and information protection. Consequently the SSA had been conservative about adopting cloud solutions, preferring strict on-premises infrastructure. This caused challenges as the available on-premises infrastructure had finite capacity and important parts of it was becoming obsolescent. The organization also perceived it was falling behind in technology with limited practical knowledge of cloud solutions in practice. This impeded the function of SSA as a body who needed to provide guidance to other parts of government on how to securely implement technology. SSA needed a way to securely start exploring cloud solutions and modernize its IT infrastructure in such a way that critical assets would remain compliant with the stringent security and information protection requirements. SSA also needed solutions to enable secure access to applications and data on their on-premises infrastructure from outside their secure network, specifically to enable employees to remain productive during COVID-19 lockdown.
Partner response/solution: Netsurit / Inobits engaged with SSA to plan a set of cloud solutions that would resolve challenges with the IT infrastructure and allow the organization to get real cloud experience while maintaining security and information protection requirements. The goal was set to demonstrate that a modern solution incorporating Azure and Microsoft 365 cloud elements could be even more secure than the equivalent on-premises services. A training program was started to educate SSA IT Professionals and management on cloud services concepts to ensure adequate understanding of the products, features and considerations. Azure workloads that were implemented included IaaS, Azure SQL, Azure Virtual Desktop, Azure Storage, Sentinel, Arc, Azure Monitor and others. Work has started on implementing Microsoft 365 hybrid workloads specifically incorporating security and information protection features.
Key benefits: SSA went from zero to over $5000 per month Azure utilization. SSA IT and security personnel have had opportunity to start engaging with cloud services and build their confidence. This solution will now be expanded to start providing greater benefits to the organization. Possibly the biggest impact of this project is the case study this provides for other government entities who have been conservative about cloud services adoption while the SSA as a key entity had not adopted cloud services. The SSA implementation should provide confidence to SSA to allow them to confidently guide other government entities in the adoption of Microsoft cloud services which should enable larger scale adoption of Azure and Microsoft 365 in the rest of the South African public sector.
– 24 June, 2021
NAL’IBALI TRUST
NAL’IBALI TRUST
National reading campaign for children gets Pastel in the cloud powered by Netsurit and Windows Virtual Desktop.
Business finances. Cloud accounting software lets you do that from any device or location.
“Netsurit has been Nal’ibali Trust’s IT support partner and managed services provider since September 2019,” says Saleem Mukuddem, CFO of Nal’ibali Trust. “By understanding our needs, Netsurit has been able to demonstrate innovation by building a bespoke solution that has transformed the way our finance team access Pastel remotely, a business-critical function.”
Netsurit moved the organisation’s Pastel solution to Windows Virtual Desktop, a Microsoft Azure-based system for virtualising Windows operating systems and providing virtualised desktops and applications in the cloud.
The need for this solution was a direct requirement from the business to support a work from home (WFH) culture prior to the lockdown. This decision and the required investment were vindicated when lockdown was implemented and is still paying dividends as remote working becomes the norm.
While the immediate requirement was to enable staff to access business-critical systems securely from home, the business has also been able to achieve the following from this innovative solution:
- Deliver the service via a remote desktop services (RDS) multi-session Windows 10 experience.
- Allows for managing and provisioning access to data across devices easily and securely, while ensuring adherence to security and compliance regulations.
- Faster access to the applications than before.
- Business continuity due to the business application running 24×7 in the cloud.
- Increased staff productivity as people are accessing business-critical systems securely from home.
- Automated backups mean data is safe and recoverable.
- Reduction in hardware on-premises, therefore reducing capex spend going forward.
- No reliance on onsite systems requiring power and support.
- Remote support is cheaper than onsite support, which is better for the client.
“We have been very impressed with the solutions, mindset and responsiveness of Netsurit’s highly qualified team,” Mukuddem says. “Their knowledge and guidance about setting up and migrating Pastel to the Microsoft Azure Cloud environment made the transition a successful one. It was delivered on time and within budget. We would highly recommend Netsurit as your managed services and cloud solutions provider. The only thing you need is a Pastel licence and a desire to move away from on-premises hardware.”
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