99.99% Uptime Achieved: How Deployus Helped SIE Protect Continuity and Reduce Costs

Problems

Solutions

Results

Background

Solutions in Engineering (SIE) is a Brisbane-based specialist service provider for the strata industry. They deliver a number of valuable solutions, such as maintenance plans, safety inspections, and software platforms, to clients across Australia and New Zealand.

Deployus has been SIE’s managed services provider for over two decades. During this period, the relationship has grown beyond basic daily support, into a strong partnership founded on trust and stability. That long-standing relationship meant that Deployus already had a solid grasp of SIE’s environment, priorities, and risk profile, which proved invaluable when the latter needed help with a major infrastructure adjustment.

Problem

SIE’s application environment had been built around an on-premises Kubernetes deployment, six years earlier. While this platform was designed to standardise delivery and simplify workflows, the reality was far more complicated. Infrastructure became highly complex, heavily customised, and difficult to maintain.

These issues were exacerbated by the departure of two key personnel who had been closely involved in the original setup. With them went much of the hands-on knowledge needed to support the environment effectively. The remaining team was left to manage an unstable, non-standard platform with limited documentation.

Key issues with the existing environment

The existing infrastructure was approaching end-of-life and becoming increasingly expensive to maintain.
The Kubernetes environment was highly customised, poorly documented, and difficult to support.
Frequent intervention was required to prevent outages, draining expertise and resources that could be better spent elsewhere.
Limited scalability made SIE’s long-term growth plans challenging to enact.
Reliance on on-premise infrastructure at a Brisbane head office made natural disasters a major operational concern.

The migration was not forced by any single failure event. Instead, this decision was shaped by a number of factors that made it clear the existing platform was no longer sufficient.

Solution

In late 2023, SIE engaged Deployus in moving the Kubernetes environment into Microsoft Azure. The goal was not to completely re-architect their infrastructure, but to modernise and future-proof their existing solutions.

This involved:

This approach was designed to preserve continuity for the development team, while replacing a fragile on-premises environment with infrastructure that provided greater flexibility, resilience, and control.

SIE’s goals

During the initial consultation, SIE outlined several key priorities:

Improve platform stability and availability
Increase ability to scale in line with shifting demand
Strengthen operational continuity, and faster incident recovery
Provide clear visibility into both infrastructure and security controls
Ensure predictable, consumption-based costs
Complete the migration with minimal operational disruption

Predictability, control, and security were the central themes of SIE’s considerations. Deployus built their strategy using these goals as their focal point.

Implementation

Deployus maintained close communication with SIE’s development team and IT management as they completed the project over a six month timeline.

Key actions taken:

Reviewed existing IT infrastructure against concerns raised by SIE
Designed Azure environment that would meet all current and future requirements
Implemented and set up the new cloud environment
Provided real-time, hands-on support and issue resolution as SIE migrated workloads
Maintained careful documentation throughout the process
Delivered online and in-person training for SIE’s employees

Minimising impact on SIE's operations

Because SIE had listed operational continuity as a primary concern, Deployus put systems in place to limit downtime:

Completing the project over a longer period, which created room for critical adjustments
Remaining in close collaboration using phone, email, and Microsoft Teams, enabling real-time incident response
Providing guidance and support throughout the migration process
Training staff in the new system, to reduce the risk of early user error

These strategies ensured that even if issues were uncovered, they could be resolved quickly and with minimal business impact.

Managing challenges during the move

As with most complex cloud migrations, implementation did include a few technical challenges. These were mainly related to Azure platform limitations and vault functionality issues in certain scenarios.

These problems were identified and addressed early due to the collaborative approach used during the implementation process. SIE led testing and go-live activities, while Deployus worked behind the scenes to resolve issues before they could lead to downtime.

Result

Following the initial migration, SIE has experienced a number of positive business outcomes:

Achieved 99.99% uptime
Platform-related downtime was significantly reduced
Support overhead decreased
Scalability improved due to the new cloud-first environment
Incident recovery became faster and more practical
Access controls, logging, and monitoring were strengthened

Operational resilience was drastically improved, costs were reduced, and SIE could finally begin looking towards the future.

Future

This project was just phase one in a broader cloud transformation initiative. Following the successful Kubernetes migration, SIE has continued moving key services into the Microsoft environment and further strengthening their security controls.

The next stage of this journey will include the full decommissioning of remaining on-premises infrastructure and the ongoing transition of workloads and file services into Microsoft 365. SIE also recently approved an artificial intelligence workflow proof of concept, which is currently pending implementation approval.

Moving forward, Deployus will continue to provide SIE with the same solid support, protection, and expertise as they have for the last two decades.

“The move has really fixed up a lot of issues we were experiencing in the system before. All the systems on there have been much more stable. We’re not having any issues with crashing… The people [at Deployus] have always been fantastic to deal with.”

– Adam O’Connor, IT and Operations Manager, Solutions in Engineering