Transitioning to a new Data Centre at the best of times is no easy task. Doing so during COVID Peak required not only contending with an enhanced COVID response structure, but also careful coordination between Capital Development and Engineering.

The fact that this was achieved without any impact on business, is testament to the seamless fashion the various teams involved worked together and the detailed planning – from budgeting to implementation, all under the lead of the ICT (Information Communication Technology) team.

The transition brought together the expertise of the whole ICT team, but particular mention should be made to James Stamkos, Jase Singh, Lucas Greenway, Mathew Park, Dominic Arulanandam, Remo Giaquinta, Nitin Patel and Liu Yang, mainly from the infrastructure team led by Vikram Multani. Also thanking Avinash Singh, Jacquie Temelso, Jacquie Campbell, Michael Gallardo, Megan Farrell, Ammar Poonawala and Mehdi Tehrani who supported and organised the migration support for our clinical applications led by Linda Heard, ICT Applications Manager. Finally, noting other team members were dealing with the massive COVID response requirements.

All above teams worked very closely with ICT Project Manager, Lawrence Buxton, who played a very important role coordinating and keeping our vendors on track to deliver.

Concurrently, the ICT team worked to upgrade and enhance our Citrix deployment known as FollowMe desktop. This has resulted in faster response for our clinical applications (like CPF and others) with outages being minimised to support our operational requirements.

This solution has been supporting various operational initiatives including vaccination hubs, various testing sites, working from home for all staff, Victorian Quarantine Hub and break-out clinics to name a few.

David Calvo, Chief Information Officer, said he was very proud of his team and said that, “Despite the challenging times, the team delivered on schedule and with no disruption to business. An amazing achievement, at the best of times!”

ICT would like to thank the Engineering and Capital Development teams, Phil Nesci – ICT Advisor, Anthony Gust – Executive Director Digital Health, Siva Sivarajah – Chief Executive and all others involved for their massive contribution and support.

Main image shows from left to right:

Vikramjit Multani – ICT Infrastructure Manager, Jacquie Temelso – ICT Application Support, Mathew Park – ICT Support Officer, Linda Heard – ICT Applications Manager and Jase Singh – ICT Support Officer.