Case study · Residential construction

Off Telstra hosting and onto Azure, without the drama.

Abode New Homes describe themselves as one of the most technologically advanced project home builders in Australia. They ran a proper assessment before choosing anyone. Then they asked us to move their servers.

Read this first. This one has never been written up properly. Everything on this page that describes the Abode job comes from one thing: a testimonial Karen Young wrote, which you can read in full below. We have not added a date, a server count, a duration or a dollar figure, because we would be making them up. Where we explain what this kind of work involves, that is us talking generally — not a claim about Abode's numbers.

In the client's words

"We did a lot of research and assessment before we chose Ginko IT to support growth and change in our business. We had very specific ideas of what we wanted as we are one of the most technologically advanced project home builders in Australia. We wanted an IT provider who could think outside the box as well as long-term and big picture. Damian and his team provided advice and direction in developing our change plan and then successfully implemented it. The plan included the migration of our virtual servers hosted by Telstra to Microsoft Azure, setting up a VPN network between our office and the Azure system, and consolidating all our IT services to a Priority Managed Services Package. The outcome of the changes to date have been very successful with Ginko providing reliable and cost-effective services."

Karen Young Abode New Homes

That is the single most technically detailed piece of proof we have, and a client wrote it, not us. It also contains the sentence most likely to make an IT provider nervous: "we did a lot of research and assessment before we chose". Being picked by someone who knows what they're looking at is a better endorsement than being picked by someone who doesn't.

The change plan

Three pieces of work, and why each one matters.

Karen named them. Here's what each one actually involves, so the quote reads as something real rather than a list of product names.

Telstra-hosted virtual servers to Microsoft Azure

Moving virtual machines out of a telco's hosting and into Azure. It sounds like a file copy. It isn't.

You have to know what every server does and who depends on it, deal with operating systems that were fine on the old platform and aren't supported on the new one, re-licence Windows correctly, get the network addressing right so nothing loses sight of anything else, and cut over in a window short enough that the business doesn't notice on Monday.

The upside of getting there is that you stop paying a fixed price for a fixed box. You can resize, you can turn things off, and you can back up to somewhere that isn't the same building.

A VPN between the office and Azure

Once the servers live in a data centre owned by Microsoft, the office needs a private, encrypted road to reach them.

That's what a site-to-cloud VPN is. Without it, you're either exposing those servers to the open internet, which is how ransomware gets in, or you're making staff jump through a login process so annoying that someone finds a way around it.

It also has to stay up. A VPN tunnel that drops twice a day is worse than no VPN, because people stop trusting the system and start emailing themselves files.

Consolidating everything onto one managed package

Karen calls it a Priority Managed Services Package. The point of it is simpler than the name.

Instead of a support arrangement here, a backup arrangement there and a hosting bill from someone else, it all sits under one agreement with one organisation accountable for it.

That's the bit that turns a migration into an improvement. A better platform with the same fragmented support around it just relocates the problem.

Keeping ourselves honest

What we can say, and what we're leaving blank.

Case study pages are the part of a website most likely to be read by someone who knows the client personally. So here is the full accounting of what is established fact on this page and what isn't.

Cloud & infrastructure Back to our work

Claim	Where it comes from
They assessed several providers before choosing us	Karen Young's testimonial
One of the most technologically advanced project home builders in Australia	Their own description of themselves
Virtual servers hosted by Telstra, migrated to Microsoft Azure	Karen Young's testimonial
A VPN between their office and the Azure system	Karen Young's testimonial
All IT services consolidated to one Priority Managed Services Package	Karen Young's testimonial
The outcome was very successful, reliable and cost-effective	Karen Young's testimonial
When it happened, how many servers, how long it took, what it saved	Not published. We have not estimated it.

If you're looking at the same move

How we run a migration like this.

Generic, not specific to Abode. This is the process any business moving off hosted servers should expect from whoever they hire.

Find out what you've actually got

Every server, what runs on it, who depends on it, what it talks to, and which of them nobody has logged into for two years. There is always at least one of those, and switching it off is free money.
Write the change plan before touching anything

What moves, what gets rebuilt instead of moved, what gets retired, what it costs to run afterwards, and in what order. You should be able to read it without a technical background and understand the trade-offs.
Build the network and the access first

The VPN, the addressing and the identity setup go in and get tested before any production workload depends on them. Doing this during the cutover weekend is how weekends turn into weeks.
Migrate in waves, with a way back

Least critical first. Every wave has a rollback that has been tested, not just described. If a wave goes badly you want a decision, not a crisis.
Right-size once it's running

Cloud bills climb when machines are sized for the worst day of the year and left that way. We review consumption after go-live and again a month later, because that is where the cost-effective part comes from.
Put it all under one agreement

Support, backup, monitoring and the Azure spend itself, in one place with one organisation answering for it.

Sitting on hosted servers you have outgrown?

We will work out what you are running, what it costs today, what it would cost in Azure, and whether moving is actually worth it. Sometimes the answer is no, and we will tell you that.

Book a free IT review Call 1300 650 757

Off Telstra hosting and onto Azure, without the drama.

Three pieces of work, and why each one matters.

Telstra-hosted virtual servers to Microsoft Azure

A VPN between the office and Azure

Consolidating everything onto one managed package

What we can say, and what we're leaving blank.

How we run a migration like this.

Find out what you've actually got

Write the change plan before touching anything

Build the network and the access first

Migrate in waves, with a way back

Right-size once it's running

Put it all under one agreement

Sitting on hosted servers you have outgrown?

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Construction & building