Case Study: Southern Cross

Problem

Southern Cross's team of over 70 software development professionals found corporate IT and security standards too restrictive, limiting their ability to work creatively and do what they needed to deliver creative business outcomes. There was a growing divide between the Security and Development Teams with comments like "security is blocking my work" and "developers don't understand the risk of ransomware".

At the same time, Southern Cross had an aging fleet of laptop and desktop computers, was moving to flexible desk arrangements, and had developers who needed access to costly high-specification machines. There was a need to decouple the software development environment from the corporate environment to provide greater developer flexibility and creativity while maintaining business and security risk standards.

Work

Southern Cross decided to move the software development teams onto Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD). AVD places peoples' Windows desktops, applications and data all in the cloud, enabling them to work on their Windows desktops securely from anywhere, on any device. Southern Cross worked with Microsoft Solutions Partner Equinox IT to implement Azure Virtual Desktop.

With Equinox IT's help, Southern Cross:

Ran a complex discovery exercise to understand needs and manage expectations across various stakeholder groups, including the Security and Software Development Teams.
Architected a comprehensive AVD solution to meet the diverse stakeholder needs
Fully deployed AVD across all of the software development teams
Configured Azure Firewall to manage security
Set-up scripts to automate deployment in AVD, installed FSLogix for user profiles and used Intune to manage corporate software
Established over 200 secure connections within AVD across on-premises, Azure, AWS and Azure DevOps infrastructure and services.

The work was carried out during the difficult time of New Zealand's initial COVID-19 lockdown, which increased delivery expectations to meet the organisation's rapidly changing remote working needs.

AVD is a Microsoft cloud service that brings its complexities and coupled with this Southern Cross's implementation was one of New Zealand's first and certainly the most complex.

Equinox IT provided a collaborative team approach to solutioning the new developer environment. Regular check-ins and updates helped to keep the momentum, as well as the establishment of user champions to really prove the solution was fit for purpose.

Damon Cowley

Head of Information, Security and Risk Management
Southern Cross Healthcare Group

It was an exciting engagement working with Southern Cross's Security and Development teams on the most complex Windows Virtual Desktop deployment in New Zealand. It was rewarding to deliver to this complex business outcome under the difficult conditions of COVID-19 lockdowns.

Ajit Garikipati

Consulting Architect
Equinox IT

Outcome

Azure Virtual Desktop is still settling in at Southern Cross, but already the team has realised several benefits to help position them for continued health industry leadership. Outcomes included:

Development teams have moved to activity-based work, flexibly delivering from anywhere with the freedom to develop creative business solutions
The corporate environment is now completely separate from the development environment and has a consistent level of security to mitigate risks and protect member data
The Azure Virtual Desktop developer environment is also highly secure, meeting Security Team expectations while also allowing development teams to do what they need
Cost effective, fast and convenient provisioning and maintenance of developer desktop environments which can now be done remotely from the developer's device
Developer compute power is decoupled from their physical device, allowing cost savings on device specifications and the ability to rapidly scale up and scale down compute power based on need, paying only for what is required
Easy to use, with development teams finding Azure Virtual Desktop a seamless experience consistent with the local device experience.

Microsoft Solutions Partner Equinox IT helped Southern Cross assess, architect, implement and secure the Azure Virtual Desktop software development environment.