CASE STUDY
Mosman Council Modernises IT Environment with Rapid Azure Cloud Migration
OVERVIEW
Mosman Council has transformed its aging on‑premises IT environment through a strategic migration to Microsoft Azure, delivered by Codify in just three months. Facing limited in‑house technical capacity, unsupported infrastructure, and repeated disaster recovery challenges, the Council needed a modern, secure, and resilient cloud platform to support its community services.
Codify partnered with Mosman Council to design a future‑ready Azure environment, uplift security with Fortinet, and modernise critical legacy systems, enabling the Council’s IT team to shift from reactive maintenance to proactive service delivery.
CHALLENGES
Like many local governments, Mosman Council was contending with two persistent IT pressures: a lack of in‑house technical expertise and an aging on‑premises infrastructure environment that had become increasingly difficult to maintain, secure, and scale.
Much of the Council’s core infrastructure was running on unsupported operating systems, and the IT team was stretched thin trying to manage complex legacy applications while keeping essential services operational.
These issues came to a head during a major disaster recovery exercise in December 2022. The test failed, highlighting significant gaps in resilience planning and reinforcing that deeper technical skills and IT modernisation were essential. Years of accumulated technical debt meant the Council needed more than an infrastructure refresh, they needed a specialist Azure partner capable of modernising their systems and building a resilient foundation for the future.
SOLUTIONS
Microsoft Cloud Migration Assessment and Roadmap to Modernisation
Before beginning its cloud transformation, Mosman Council partnered with Microsoft to undertake a comprehensive Azure migration and modernisation assessment.
This Microsoft‑funded engagement provided a clear, evidence based understanding of the Council’s technical debt, infrastructure risks, and long‑term cost implications.
The assessment modelled multi‑year infrastructure costs, compared on‑premises power and hosting expenses, and mapped the Council’s entire server and application landscape. It also delivered a detailed Azure migration roadmap outlining the operational, financial, and security benefits of moving to the cloud.
This process validated Azure as the right strategic direction and gave the Council the confidence to proceed with a modernisation program designed to strengthen resilience and address long‑standing technical debt.
Assessment Highlights
Multi year cost modelling
Power and infrastructure cost comparison
Technical debt analysis
Full Azure migration roadmap
Clear business case for cloud adoption
A Complex Azure Cloud Migration Delivered Fast and at Scale
Mosman Council’s move to Microsoft Azure was a large‑scale, highly complex transformation, completed in just 3 months.
The migration involved far more than lifting and shifting virtual machines. Codify rebuilt the Council’s entire environment in Azure, including networking, security, identity, servers, and a suite of legacy applications that required deep analysis and remediation to function in the cloud. A key part of the modernisation included upgrading production workloads from Windows Server 2008 R2 to fully supported versions, significantly reducing operational and security risks.
Codify also deployed a new Azure Landing Zone, providing a secure, scalable foundation aligned with Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework best practices. This ensured the Council’s environment was built on a modern architecture designed for long‑term growth, governance, and operational efficiency. Codify worked closely with the Council’s IT team throughout the process, often troubleshooting legacy systems at the code level to ensure they could be modernised and supported in Azure.
The success of the migration was validated in early 2024 when Mosman Council executed a full disaster recovery exercise, shutting down on‑premises infrastructure and operating entirely from Azure. The test ran seamlessly, demonstrating the resilience and reliability of the new cloud environment.
Strengthening Azure Cloud Security with an Integrated Fortinet Architecture
A major component of the modernisation program was a significant uplift in the Council’s security posture.
Codify deployed FortiGate VM firewalls fully integrated with Azure’s native services, creating a unified and scalable security foundation.
This integrated approach strengthened day‑to‑day security and positioned the Council to consolidate multiple legacy security tools into a single, cost‑optimised platform.
Security Enhancements
Centralised threat protection across all Council environments
Log ingestion directly into Microsoft Sentinel for advanced detection
Administrative logging integrated with Microsoft Entra ID
Dynamic routing via Azure Route Server to support future network growth
A converged platform capable of supporting evolving security and networking needs
RESULTS
A Modern, Secure, and Resilient Local Government IT Environment
Mosman Council now operates on a fully modernised Azure environment that has significantly improved the stability, security, and resilience of its IT operations.
By eliminating unsupported systems and modernising legacy workloads, the Council has reduced operational risk and gained a reliable foundation for delivering community services into the future.
The uplift in security, driven by the integrated Fortinet and Azure‑native architecture, has strengthened the Council’s ability to detect, respond to, and recover from threats. The successful disaster recovery exercise in early 2024 demonstrated that the Council can now operate seamlessly even during major disruptions.
Codify continues to provide Managed Azure Services, helping the Council optimise cloud costs, adopt new Azure capabilities, and maintain a secure, well‑governed environment as its digital needs evolve.
With a stable cloud platform in place, the IT team has shifted from reactive maintenance to higher‑value, strategic work, enabling continuous optimisation, adoption of cloud‑native services, and expansion of the Council’s digital capabilities to better support staff and the community.
“Codify provides deep expertise but also helps expand our understanding of best practices… generating real and immediate value for Mosman Council.”
James Qi
Manager IT Services at Mosman Council