Success Stories

Microsoft Azure accelerates digital drive for Western Cape Government Department of Health

Customer Profile

Customer
Western Cape Government Department of Health
Country
Republic of South Africa
Industry
Public and Health Sector
Organisation Size
10 000+ Employees

Software and Services

– Microsoft Azure
– Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines
– Oracle on Azure
– Gijima Cloud Migration Services
– Enterprise Content Management

Customer Challenge

The Western Cape Government was faced with the challenge of modernizing its Department of Health Enterprise Content Management system at the hospitals and to become more agile in providing a secure service to the business, users and ultimately the citizens of the province during the Covid-19 pandemic. The requirement was to extend existing Hospital infrastructure into Azure to provide an elastic, scalable, resilient, and extensible platform upon which Enterprise Content Management services can be built and hosted. The main goal was to utilize Azure to make use of the benefits of cloud computing from both Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and eventually Platform as a Service (PaaS) functionality. Furthermore, the Western Cape Government required a foundation to be in place that meets their requirements of:

▪ Reduce complexity and provide a secure environment:

o Improve performance and accessibility of the ECM at the hospitals and remote locations for doctors and hospital staff.

o Provide enhanced controls

▪ Standardise the deployment models by o Having defined the principles for creating resources o Location of resources and other shares services

▪ Provide the foundation for Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service

o Site Recovery Services, including backup

The Answer

The first step in delivering the digital journey was the data centre shift away from physical infrastructure at the Hospitals to Microsoft Azure. Gijima, delivered a Rapid migration of the on-premises server landscape to Microsoft Azure utilising an industrialised approach for the migration.

This was achieved in less-than 2 months utilising Microsoft Azure migration services. All done without any significant downtime during migration.

Gijima was responsible for discovery, assessment, planning, and migration of the ECM application platforms. It involved a migration strategy to move ECM servers in the hospitals to Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) environments as well as a future migration strategy to move applications and databases from both legacy and modern Windows Server to Platform as a Service (PaaS). Furthermore, Gijima with Microsoft provides ongoing cloud managed support service on the Azure Platform for the customer.

Feedback from Hilton Jacobs, Director: Transversal Applications Development, Western Cape Government: “It was an absolute pleasure to work with you and your team again to complete yet another successful project”

Outcome

The digital transformation of the services it provides has had immediate benefits. The new cloud-delivered service allows for the agile provisioning of an environment which in the past due procurement timeframes, have been holding back development. Internal IT teams could provision and test new applications and services within hours.

There is also an efficiency gain in terms of finances, as internal digitization has started to significantly reduce the cost of operations while improving services to business. Each account is created to allow for a direct mapping to a department.

The department will allow the customer to have a consolidated, “rolled up” view, of the bill for the subscriptions beneath the relevant account.

The goal is to improve citizen satisfaction while genuinely improving lives. In this, the engagement provides the customer with the ability to transition into the next phase of their Digital Transformation strategy which will differentiate them and serve their citizens better. This customer story underlines Gijima’s ability to successfully executive on large scale enterprise Azure engagements, providing true value to our customers.

Contact Gijima for any further information on how we can assist you in your digital journey

Back to list