As demand for digital health services accelerated, Whānau Tahi needed an IT environment that could keep pace. Its existing on-premise infrastructure was becoming increasingly difficult to scale, while growing integration requirements were putting additional pressure on resources and service performance.
Working with Parallo, Whānau Tahi migrated its core technology environment to Microsoft Azure, creating a more scalable, resilient and secure cloud platform to support its services and future growth.
Scaling critical services without compromising security.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the shift towards digital-first healthcare and social services across New Zealand. As Whānau Tahi’s customers adopted new digital systems, the number and complexity of integrations with its platforms and applications increased significantly. Its existing on-premises environment was not designed for that pace of change. Integrations could be slow, workloads were multiplying and maintaining consistent service performance was becoming increasingly challenging.
There was also little room for compromise. Whānau Tahi’s systems process highly sensitive and tightly regulated information, meaning any modernisation needed to maintain stringent security and compliance requirements. The organisation needed an environment that could support more agile development, improve performance and resilience, and scale as demand changed, while maintaining the controls required for critical health and social services data.
Moving from on-premise infrastructure to Azure
Parallo designed a cloud-first environment using Microsoft Azure, with the migration beginning in May 2020 and progressing in stages over the following 18 months. The programme included establishing the Azure landing environment and migrating several of Whānau Tahi’s core workloads, including Connected Care and Socrates, its needs assessment, service coordination and integrated case management applications. The largest workload was the New Zealand Electronic Prescription Service (NZePS), developed and managed by Whānau Tahi on behalf of the New Zealand Ministry of Health.
Azure DevOps was used to manage build, testing and deployment processes, bringing source code, work tracking and task coordination into a central environment. Monitoring, logging and performance tracking were also established to provide greater visibility across the platform and help optimise resource utilisation.
Security and compliance were built into the new environment from the outset. Azure security features, policy controls and secure development practices were configured and tested against the required New Zealand compliance standards.
“Collaborating with Parallo has been instrumental in our journey to modernise our IT infrastructure and streamline operations. This case study is a testament to technological innovation and a showcase of how security and compliance can be integrated seamlessly into modern IT solutions.”
— Clinton George, Chief Information and Security Officer, Whānau Tahi
A more resilient platform for connected care
With its core services running on Azure, Whānau Tahi now has a modern and flexible technology environment designed to support more consistent and repeatable development and service delivery. Around-the-clock monitoring across the platform, applications and security provides greater visibility into service performance and enables the team to respond proactively as operating conditions change.
Consolidating legacy technologies into Azure has also reduced the administrative and maintenance burden on Whānau Tahi’s technical resources. With Azure development, code and change-management tooling in place, the team can spend more of its time on service innovation and respond more quickly to changing customer requirements.
Resilience and security have improved too. Azure’s geographically distributed infrastructure and built-in disaster recovery capabilities provide additional protection for critical services, while compliance management through Azure Security Centre supports ongoing adherence to ISO 27001 and the New Zealand Information Security Manual, including requirements relating to restricted data.
Building a platform for what comes next
For Whānau Tahi, moving to Azure was about more than replacing infrastructure. It created a technology foundation capable of supporting the organisation as its services, customers and markets continue to evolve.
Its family-centred solutions now operate on an industry-standard cloud platform with the scalability, security and operational resilience needed to support critical services. With Parallo providing ongoing support for the cloud environment, Whānau Tahi can focus more of its resources on developing the technology and services its customers rely on.
That puts the organisation in a stronger position to continue improving the delivery of connected, case-managed care across Aotearoa and support its growth in international markets.
