Australian Catholic Education

ACU worked with Data^#3 and Microsoft specialists to fine-tune plans for a shift to Azure hosted services, with Data^#3 performing a structured and phased build of the Azure landing zone and migrating core infrastructure to the cloud. Parker said the importance of this transition should not be underestimated.

“As Chief Information and Digital Officer at ACU, I’m proud to share the successful migration of our core IT infrastructure from two on-premises data centres, located in Melbourne and Sydney, to Azure. This fundamental shift in our infrastructure profoundly and positively changes the way we enable agility, resilience, and innovation across the university.”

Along with VM migration using Azure VMware Services (AVS) and application gateway development, Data^#3 drew on its depth of security and business continuity expertise, deploying Palo Alto Firewall Services and Commvault Cloud Backup to ensure the solution was robust. Throughout the process, risk management was key.

“The migration followed a structured ‘lift and shift’ approach, moving VMware-based workloads into Azure in carefully sequenced waves. This allowed us to group systems by technical dependencies, minimise risk, and validate each step through rigorous testing. We retained rollback options throughout, ensuring continuity of service and operational safety.”

The six-month phased project meant that Data^#3, Microsoft and ACU worked closely together, building a relationship that Parker said was notable for its collaboration and mutual respect. While the ACU team was generous sharing knowledge of their own environment, they were also quick to embrace the opportunity to work with a team with deep experience of performing cloud transitions.

“Data^#3 embedded into our team with a real partnership approach and strong project governance. They built the environment and led the migration process. The expertise was coming from the Data^#3 guys of something our team had not been exposed. We had a once-in-a-career chance to experience the transition to cloud.”

The staged approach allowed ACU to manage the transition to Azure alongside their day-to-day activities. From start to finish, the university focussed on achieving results without causing disruption to users. The outcome, said Parker, allowed his team to provide a more responsive service; free of the burden of managing data centres, they could focus on adding greater value.

“The benefits have been substantial. We’ve significantly reduced the operational burden of managing physical infrastructure, allowing our teams to focus on higher-value, innovation-led work. More importantly, we’ve unlocked greater agility in how we provision compute and data services. What once took weeks can now be achieved in hours, whether it’s spinning up new environments, scaling workloads, or integrating advanced services like analytics, AI, or automation.”

By moving away from ageing infrastructure, ACU has acted to prevent rising risk. The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) says that legacy IT “presents significant and enduring risks to the cyber security posture” of organisations, and hidden costs such as maintenance, support, and downtime just add to the burden. This, along with avoiding lost opportunities, was top of mind for the ACU team when embarking on the transformational project.

“It was the view of the leadership team that we needed to do this early so that we could turn our attention to other things. “

Those “other things” in the university context are many and varied, but all contribute in some way to keeping ACU at the forefront of tertiary education. The university is justifiably proud of its growing reputation among students, researchers and academics alike. Technology is very much a differentiator in this fiercely competitive sector, and although groundbreaking apps gather the most headlines, for National Manager Digital Platform Services – Information Technology, Australian Catholic University.  Adrian Yarrow, it was clear that these are reliant on the right underlying foundation.

“Much in the same way with cyber security, you can’t rest on your laurels with investments in infrastructure. It is not set and forget, we need to remain diligent, need to remain conscious of ongoing investment, and to continue to do so moving forward. We must demonstrate that the move to Azure has indeed allowed us to realise the proposed benefits. We must show demonstrable value.”

In moving from a capital expenditure (capex) to an operational expenditure (opex) model, Yarrow was acutely aware that the project would not only be judged on its technical fit but also its financial viability. Cloud overspend had proven problematic for plenty of organisations, so paying close attention to operational consumption of resources, the financial implications, and ensuring effective governance was critical.

“This profoundly shifts our operating model and the way we think of these resources. We had some early reminders about the importance of staying on top of things diligently when it comes to FINOPS. Those early experiences and reminders were helpful in terms of our posture. I think they created a heightened sense, making sure we stayed on track,” stated Yarrow.

Part of that heightened sense came in the form of increased visibility, and the Data^#3 team helped ACU to become adept with Azure tools that give technology consumption insights that just weren’t possible with on-premises infrastructure.

“We were effectively blind to utilisation in terms of infrastructure layers- it was not possible to fully identify the capacity used in the various systems we ran in terms of how to attribute that across the organisation. We now can be more strategic about the resources we are managing.

“Having that insight creates a greater awareness and understanding of what is driving cost and consumption, and the need for resources. What we might have done before, essentially, is over provision for infrastructure needs but not really known where or why that was needed. Now, we know what is driving demand, so we can be more effective in managing these resources and tell a more complete story.”

Although the foundation had been put in place to support ACU as it reaches into the future, Parker is proud that users were oblivious to the monumental shift from ageing infrastructure to a modern, cloud-based environment.

“The approach that Data^#3 and Microsoft put on the table was non-invasive, with no extended outages as we migrated our existing environment to Azure, it happened in a few windows of time out of hours. I asked myself, ‘did anyone notice it happening?’ If not, great job!”

While the project itself was almost invisible to users, the future it has enabled is anything but. Recognising the capacity for technology to differentiate, Parker said that ACU can now be more responsive to opportunities.

“We can respond to emerging needs, especially in a university that is hungry for digital adoption. Traditional procurement processes took time, and now we are able to bring demands to bear very quickly, and to be very accurate with our forecasting, which has an impact to the university’s budget position.”