The brief
Project teams in the office, at home and on site, working from the same place
Australis Facade designs, supplies and installs facade systems for high-rise residential and commercial developments. On any given day its people are in the Sydney office, at home or on a construction site, and they are passing drawings and documents back and forth with consultants, contractors and builders the whole time.
Their mail, documents and business systems had to follow them, with proper control over who can see and change a project document. The large design and BIM files and the finance system are a different matter; they only perform well on local infrastructure. The architecture follows what each workload needs in performance, access and management, which is a different answer for a BIM file server than for a mailbox.
What moved where
We set up the cloud services first, then sized the local platform around what stayed
Doing it in that order meant we knew exactly which workloads the local platform would carry before we specified it. Microsoft Entra ID, Intune and Microsoft Defender run across both sides, and identity, devices and security are managed once.
- Identity Entra ID with single sign-on, MFA and Conditional Access, set up before anything moved
- Project sites SharePoint Online sites built around active developments
- Mail and collaboration Exchange Online, Teams and OneDrive migrated in waves
- Remote access Azure Virtual Desktop for staff who need the retained systems
- Local platform Refreshed and sized for the BIM file services and finance
What we delivered
What we built on each side
One sign-in for the whole environment
Microsoft Entra ID handles single sign-on, with Conditional Access checking MFA and device compliance before anyone gets in. Microsoft Defender covers the endpoints and Microsoft 365 whether a device is in the office, at home or on site.
Project documents organised the way the projects run
Each active development has its own SharePoint Online site, with permissions scoped to that project. Internal teams, consultants, contractors and builders work on the same documents, with version history and a record of who changed what.
Mail and collaboration migrated in waves
Mail went to Exchange Online first, then Teams, OneDrive and the project data, in planned waves. People carried on working in each wave while their services moved underneath them.
Remote access through Azure Virtual Desktop
Staff who need the systems that stayed local reach them through Azure Virtual Desktop. Their devices are managed through Intune, against the compliance rules we set at the start of the project.
A local platform sized for BIM and finance
With the cloud side settled, we refreshed the local infrastructure and sized it for the BIM file services and the finance system. Both keep the response times they need, and Azure Backup holds an offsite copy.