Port Phillip moves core IT to private cloud for resilience boost

Interactive has partnered with the City of Port Phillip to migrate the council's legacy IT systems from a heritage-listed building to a cloud environment.

The City of Port Phillip, which operates out of the historic St Kilda Town Hall, had long dealt with difficulties involved in running modern IT infrastructure within a building over 100 years old.

The physical limitations of the site, combined with community reliance on uninterrupted digital services, created significant operational risks. Even minor outages posed the threat of major disruption to more than 100 essential council services.

Concerns escalated after an environmental risk was identified in the council's on-premises server room, located close to critical hardware racks.

The city's IT leadership determined that immediate action was needed to ensure the protection and reliability of its services, although significant structural modifications to the heritage site were not permitted.

If the existing server racks had failed, the result would have been a city-wide operational standstill, impacting numerous services and residents in the area. With an urgent requirement to mitigate these risks, the City of Port Phillip sought alternatives to conventional data storage and operations.

Migration strategy

Interactive developed and delivered a two-phased migration strategy designed to balance speed, operational stability, and the need for future-ready infrastructure.

Within three months, the council's systems were relocated to a secure colocation facility. This move was conducted over several weekends to avoid any interruption to public-facing services.

Throughout the migration, Interactive provided direct support for hands-on troubleshooting. One notable incident occurred when a core network switch failed unexpectedly at night during the migration process. In response, Interactive sourced, configured, and deployed a replacement switch within hours, ensuring uninterrupted business continuity and maintaining critical services for the city.

Improving resilience

Following the initial migration, Interactive worked with council IT teams to implement further infrastructure upgrades, including enhanced disaster recovery capabilities and improvements to system scalability.

This included the deployment of NetApp Keystone storage with full managed services, alongside the introduction of 24/7 monitoring and incident response.

The transition reportedly led to a significant reduction in major system outages, with internal teams noting improved application responsiveness and overall faster performance. Security was also enhanced by removing end-of-life hardware and strengthening protections using updated firewall solutions and improved network security protocols.

Interactive's role extended beyond that of a data centre provider.

The company was described as operating as a one-stop shop for networking, hardware, cloud, support, and project management needs across the council's critical digital functions. The council's core IT systems are now described as more efficient and secure, enabling internal teams to focus on longer-term technology priorities such as multi-cloud adoption and the use of artificial intelligence to enhance service delivery.

Leadership and results

"The City of Port Phillip has shown proactivity and leadership. Despite the complexity and constraints, they made bold decisions that prioritised service continuity and long-term resilience. We're proud to have been their partner in that journey."

This was the view expressed by David Forrest, Account Executive at Interactive, who highlighted the project as an example of how local government can navigate digital transformation under pressure.

The collaborative approach taken by the city and Interactive helped establish a relationship built on transparency and mutual respect. The project began in response to immediate infrastructure risks but led to a broader transformation in the way the council's technology is managed and delivered.

The managed private cloud solution introduced by Interactive has provided the City of Port Phillip with enhanced security, operational stability, and greater scalability, laying the groundwork for future digital initiatives.