Sustainable Timber Tasmania (formerly Forestry Tasmania)

Nathan O'Brien, Technology Infrastructure Manager

Technical story

• Migrated to Infrastructure as a Service with TasmaNet in January 2017

The Background

Sustainable Timber Tasmania is a Tasmanian Government Business Enterprise under State legislation for:

• Sustainably managing approximately 800,000 hectares of public production forest
• Undertaking forest operations for the production and sale of forest products from these forests

The Challenges

• A corporate restructure resulting in changed Head Office requirements in addition to a planned move of premises
• Existing server hardware was at the end of its life and there was a significant risk that if the hardware was relocated it may not function correctly in the new location
• The organisation have a small IT team and a dedicated resource for server management was not feasible.  In addition, the shortage of system engineering personnel in Tasmania made recruitment for specialty IT personnel difficult and costly
• Keeping data 'on island' was an important consideration

The Solution

• Data Centre as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service were both assessed to minimise the risks associated with the physical relocation, after careful consideration of long term personnel requirements and 'on island' data, Sustainable Timber adopted IaaS with TasmaNet
• The project plan was developed over a 12 month period and migration was seamless
• Services provided by TasmaNet consist of 84 virtual machines

The Benefits

• IaaS has removed the requirement to internally support server hardware and the organisation's IT personnel are able to focus on more targeted tasks using the specialist skills they possess
• Sustainable Timber Tasmania were able to cost effectively reduce their IT risk profile
• The arrangements with NT provided the ability to do 'like for like' cost comparisons against various options assisting decision making
• The fixed costs over the duration of the service provided transparency with no hidden costs
• Under the arrangements, the organisation is able to select Service Levels that meet the organisation's needs
• There was no lengthy procurement process or ongoing contract management as Sustainable Timber Tasmania were able to purchase under the whole of Government arrangements already in place

"Networking Tasmania's Infrastructure as a Service offering has allowed our small team to focus on developing existing skill sets to support our business, enabling out staff to do more with less."

Tasports

Mark Vosper, Manager IT

Technical Story

Networking Tasmania provides Tasports with bandwidth in regional areas

The Background

Tasports' role is to manage, operate and develop ports in Tasmania and are directly responsible for pilotage and navigation services, security, port control and maintenance of community waterfront assets.  Tasports run a diverse range of commercial operations across a large geographical area.  They are responsible for ten Tasmanian Ports which include major sites such as Hobart, Bell Bay, Burnie and Devonport and regional ports such as Strahan, Stanley, King Island and Flinders Island.

The Challenge

The challenge for Tasports was to provide secure, reliable and cost effective data services to metropolitan, regional and remote sites across Tasmania.

The Solution

• Tasports uses the NT Core Service to provide security services such as intrusion detection and prevention, content filtering and inspection, malware detection and prevention, and network gateway services.
• Tasports use a variety of NT Connection Services through different providers and delivery methods to ensure reliable access to all of its Tasmanian sites.

The Benefits

Tasports have found the security services provided by Networking Tasmania to be very effective.  The organisation have conducted network penetration tests and were very pleased with the results.

Through the use of NT Connection Services, Tasports are able to obtain reliable services across Tasmania including at regional and remote locations at a competitive price.

"Networking Tasmania gives us the flexibility to engage the most appropriate supplier for each individual site, whether it is in Hobart, Stanley or King Island."