Keeping essential services running through tech innovation

We worked with a regional water authority that collects and distributes water to households as well as managing sewerage collection. Our aim was to provide reliable continuity to service a network of around 50 sites with both pump station and water collection facilities.
IT consulting, Case Study Government Gippsland

Location

Regional Victoria

Length of relationship

Working with Otto since 2000

Key equipment/products/services provided

Internet, cybersecurity, server infrastructure, VoIP phone system, onsite IT support, project delivery, remote IT support, data centre services

The problem

Our client was deemed as an essential service provider after the 2008 droughts caused them to run out water, leaving the community reliant on truck deliveries. Because of this, they needed to have a continuity system in place to avoid this same issue and be able to continue providing their services.

IT consulting, Case Study Government Gippsland

The consequences

They were unable to keep up with the water demand and needed to have water delivered via truck to keep up with their water supply needs, impacting the service received by the end users.

IT consulting, Case Study Government Gippsland

The solution

We worked with a company called Omniconnect to implement a private wireless backbone network with a 100mb/s connection between their two main sites, allowing them to replicate the work environment at two different locations. We also installed redundant links in the form of fibre internet, private Wi-Fi, public Wi-Fi, and 3,4 & 5G all on an auto-failover setup.

IT consulting, Case Study Government Gippsland

The challenges

The main challenges of this project included getting the auto-failover for their internet connections to work as desired, as they had a fibre connection as well as 3G, 4G & 5G connections. However, we managed to overcome this. Another big challenge was ensuring they had the correct infrastructure in place to be able to operate 24/7. Specifically, we needed to ensure we had enough host servers in place that if we needed to perform maintenance on one, the other two were able to operate as normal with no customer impact.