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Microsoft .NET Technology Customer Solution Case Study

Snowy River Council’s standardisation on the Microsoft platform has provided such a well-managed, secure IT environment that they plan to offer hosted services to adjacent councils.

Overview “Microsoft-based applications integrate tightly Country or region: Australia across our environment and have consistent Industry: Government interface, reducing staff training and support Customer Profile requirements.” Snowy River Shire Council in NSW has 7,200 residents, a number which swells Matthew O’Sullivan, Information Communication Technology Manager, Snowy River Council to over 20,000 in the skiing season, served by a council staff of 120. Snowy River Council faced a common challenge for local Business Situation government. On one hand, they had a growing population and Snowy River Shire Council were facing an increasing demand for services to be delivered online; on the an increasing demand from ratepayers for electronically delivered services, but other they faced tight budgetary restraints and constituent were challenged to deliver them pressure not to increase rates over normal Consumer Price effectively using their ageing information technology infrastructure. Index (CPI) rises. By rationalising their IT environment and standardising on the Solution Snowy River Shire Council deployed an Microsoft platform, they were able to increase operational integrated solution based on end-to-end efficiencies, improve compliance in document management and Microsoft technologies and business applications to manage all of their deliver essential services online in a manageable secure financials, human resources, payroll, environment. rating, property, work and asset management. This enables them to streamline business processes and deliver far more efficient and flexible customer service.

Benefits  Improved communications and collaboration  A secure and reliable IT infrastructure  Simple cost-effective management Situation After an in-depth investigation, the Snowy Snowy River Shire is situated in the River Shire Council decided to standardise southeast corner of New South Wales, 150 on the Microsoft platform across their kilometres south of Canberra and about environment and so all council staff were half-way between Sydney and Melbourne. equipped with desktop and notebook While the shire's permanent population is computers running Microsoft® Windows® more than 7,200, this number swells to XP. This enabled them to deploy a some 20,000 in the ski season. The council Microsoft-based suite of human resources, employs 120 staff across six locations. payroll, rating and property management The shire boasts the fifth-highest growth and work, GIS mapping and asset rate of all the local government areas in management solutions from New South Wales and the town of TechnologyOne complemented with the Jindabyne is the second-fastest growing NetCat Online content management urban area in NSW, with many of its system, MapInfo and Total Records property owners residing in Sydney. Information Management (TRIM), which This placed the council in the position of provide integrated document management having two key challenges: firstly, a capabilities including automatic storage growing demand for their services on a and disposal scheduling. constrained budget; and secondly, the Matthew O’Sullivan, comments: “These need for essential services, such as Microsoft-based applications integrate development applications, rates payments tightly across our environment and have and so on to be delivered online. consistent interfaces, reducing staff training To meet these needs, the council knew and support requirements, which is critical they would need to overhaul their IT when you have a small IT team of two systems. looking after 120 desktop and notebook Snowy River Council Information PCs.” Communication Technology Manager, For the network, the council installed a 10 Matthew O’Sullivan, comments: “Over the MBps Wide Area Network fibre optic link, years, we had accumulated more than 75 which allowed them to migrate their ageing unique desktop computers and two phone system, providing a significant cost servers, none of which could communicate saving and increased functionality. As part effectively with each other. These disparate of this innovation, they also incorporated systems were also proving expensive to full network monitoring for all council sites maintain. The problem was brought to a with the new IP-based telephone system. head in 2003 when the supplier of the The next phase will be to integrate the council's core business system announced features of Microsoft® Office Outlook® and it intended to cease support in 2005, other mobile solutions into various council prompting us to review our entire IT workers’ hand-held devices, to improve solution.” customer service with greater accountability and more points of communication. Solution The council’s offices at Berridale include a IBM eServer® BladeCenter™ with 12 Intel® processor-based Blade servers and an IBM Matthew O’Sullivan comments: “Microsoft TotalStorage® Storage Area Network (SAN) technology has enabled us to move from for centralised data storage running manual time sheets for staff hours to Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003, electronic time sheets, which has increased Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 and efficiency and made staff more Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2003. accountable. Data archived on this solution is backed up “Another key improvement is that to a remote disaster recovery site 30 management can see real time, analytical kilometres away at Jindabyne, allowing the statistics from various department. For council to have business continuity in the example, they can monitor development event of a major disaster, such as a applications to ensure they meet council bushfire. Microsoft SQL Server 2003 will guidelines. enable bi-directional real time “This provides management with more synchronisation, so data can be backed up detail and more up-to-date figures, in real time. This architecture will help ensuring they make more informed council to protect data in line with current decisions. and future legislative; for example, records Another software application residing on and archiving under the NSW State the Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 is General Disposal Authority (GDA) 10 ProclaimOne. This property management legislation that enforces the archiving of and regulatory applications suite helps public information and correspondence. council manage property, rates and regulates all process-driven applications such as certificates and development Benefits applications for council. In one application, council staff can manage property and Streamlined Processes rating, water billing, receipting, debt Council staff have been able to streamline management, regulatory management, the management of assets and financial payroll, human resource management and data using just one application which does financial accounting. All council records, away with cumbersome manual systems files, documents and correspondence and double entry. Because the system can relating to water, rates property manage travel requisitions and inventory as management and so on are stored in the well as procurement, the council can Total Record Information Management consolidate payments across all of their (TRIM) solution which interfaces into a accounts, streamlining their internal mapping application MapInfo featuring processes. In addition, managers can aerial photos and maps of the whole shire, glean timely business intelligence because specific regions right down to individual data can be updated in real time and a roads. variety of analytical reports can be “This has made us far more effective in the processed to provide in-depth views of way we work,” says Matthew O’Sullivan. assets and financials, giving them the “When council are planning new information they need to make accurate developments, road works, land releases decisions. or any activity involving residents, officers simply click on the affected houses or through Citrix® and a full Disaster Recovery streets in the mapping application, select a site, Snowy River Shire is well-equipped to letter template and the system can print out offer hosted services and facilities a planning notification letter and address management for other councils. Being the envelope to all the highlighted houses.” Microsoft end-to-end means our systems integrate with each other seamlessly. This Improved Customer Services means we can scale easily to connect third Microsoft technologies allow Snowy River parties, add new layers to the network and Shire Council to develop systems that manage the entire solution from one enable residents to view their information centralised location without facing online and pay rates and review and track escalating administration overheads” services such as development applications – a valued facility for those ratepayers who Manageability and Reliability reside primarily in Sydney. Residents can One of the key benefits of the Microsoft book facilities and services online such as end-to-end solution has been the sports fields for school carnivals and town management tools that enable Matthew to halls for amateur productions. This manage all of their desktops, notebooks information is managed in TRIM and and servers from the Berridale council processed by Microsoft® SQL server in the offices. relevant system. For example, online rates Matthew O’Sullivan comments: “We have payments are directed to FinanceOne, recently installed Remote Deployment which automatically returns a confirmation on receipt of payment.

Sustaining the Local Economy With over 2.8 million visitors annually, the Snowy Mountains region is Australia’s major inland tourist destination. To help many of the region’s tourism enterprises promote themselves, organise local events and provide first-class IT facilities, the council plans to access to its high-speed Wide Area Network. Already the Berridale telephone exchange has been given access, enabling staff there to connect the local police station and school. As well, the council has identified additional revenue opportunities through offering data storage in their disaster recovery centre as an outsourced or facilities managed service for adjacent councils. Matthew O’Sullivan comments: “With excellent remote access capabilities For More Information Manager from IBM which integrates with For more information about Microsoft Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) and products and services, please call Microsoft Systems Management Server 13 20 58 (Australia). For more (SMS) for remote automatic updates to our information about Microsoft’s local desktop computers at every office. government solutions, please visit the “This has given us a centralised system Web site at management and desktop management for www.microsoft.com.au/localgovernment all locations; an important consideration or email [email protected] when you have more than 9,000 square kilometres to cover and offices that are 30 For more information about Corporate kilometres apart to manage. Centralised Express products and services, visit their remote computer management is essential Web site at www.ce.com.au for us to ensure we can monitor and maintain our systems efficiently.” For more information about the Snowy With 120 employees, and 100 desktops, River Shire Council visit the shire can measure the cost of system www.snowyriver.nsw.gov.au outages in many thousands of dollars an hour. Their previous system regularly suffered major disruptions between offices, so the new environment shows a great improvement in productivity and system availability. Now, with the Microsoft-based solution, systems outages are measure in seconds per month.

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Software and Services Partners  Products  IBM − Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional  Corporate Express − Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 − Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 © 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case − study is for informational purposes only. Microsoft® Operations Manager 2005 MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR − IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft® Systems Management Microsoft, the Microsoft logo, the .NET logo, SQL Server, − Windows and Windows Server are either registered Server 2003 trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Document published January 2006