Uniting NSW.ACT fuels growth and delivers reliable, compassionate care with Azure Virtual Desktop

In an early learning program run by Uniting NSW.ACT, preschoolers roll, mash, and mold colorful clay. In another corner of the room, children bring their imaginations to life on the easel—getting almost as much paint on the paper as they do on their smocks. Other youngsters play with plastic dinosaurs and kangaroos, giggling at the silly scene. 

“I’m looking for a good future and good life for my kids,” says Dr. Efaw Eva Mohammed, a parent from South West Sydney whose son attends a Uniting early learning program. When she first immigrated to Australia, she struggled to navigate unfamiliar education, immunization, and childcare subsidy systems. Uniting staff helped her jump through the necessary hoops and enroll in a nearby early learning program. "[They] are like keys to the treasure for my child,” she says. 

Mohammad and her son are just two examples of the 145,000 people Uniting serve every year across New South Wales and the federal district Australian Capital Territory (ACT). Through elder and home care, mental health services, family reunification, foster carers support, independent living properties, early education, and more, Uniting helps create a better future for individuals, families, and communities. 

Given Australia’s aging population, as well as increased demand for in-home care and mental health services, Uniting is growing to ensure even more people have access to its compassionate offerings. “We at Uniting have a scalable model. As the technology group within Uniting, we get everyone up and running quickly. Our infrastructure and processes help our programs disrupt entrenched disadvantage,” says Elo Falck, Senior Manager of Cloud Transformation Services at Uniting NSW.ACT.

Unfortunately, the nonprofit’s legacy infrastructure and on-premise data center created speedbumps for Uniting’s commitment to delivering its warm, responsive care throughout the region. Overburdened, end-of-life on-prem servers caused frustrating delays for staff and frontline workers. Increasing maintenance costs pressured Uniting’s budget. The expiration of its data center agreement would have necessitated a costly reinvestment in new on-prem infrastructure. And leadership questioned if continuing down the data center path was the right strategic move, given the opportunities of AI and the cloud. 

Uniting collaborated with Microsoft partner cubesys to modernize its critical workloads. Azure Virtual Desktop now empowers a mix of in-person and remote staff to securely deliver a wide variety of human services without aggravating disruptions. The flexibility of Azure enables Uniting’s technology team to address issues and take advantage of opportunities. Azure Virtual Desktop is also saving the nonprofit money, allowing it to reinvest in mission-driving projects.   

“The implementation of Azure Virtual Desktop has been a game-changer for us. The transition was seamless, and the support from cubesys was exceptional,” says Falck. "We’re really making the connection between technology and helping the community.”

Switching to the Cloud on a deadline

When Uniting learned the organization would have to exit its on-premise primary data center within a year, it needed to pivot. Meanwhile, the on-prem server delivery system constantly caused business applications to freeze or crash. Staff flooded the help desk with tickets to reboot their applications. Workers sometimes spent hours a day trying to work around unresponsive applications—all with the root cause of an underperforming server infrastructure. 

The disruptions hobbled frontline workers, who need business applications to record client notes, answer customer questions, send communications, and more. “Our people need to be able to open client records in a timely manner, and the system just wasn’t letting them do it,” remembers Sharyn Oswald, Client Systems Management Lead at Uniting NSW.ACT.

While Uniting originally planned to move to another data center, it turned to cubesys to develop and evaluate an Azure Virtual Desktop proof of concept. Funded by the Microsoft Azure Migration and Modernization Program, cubesys supported Uniting to build an Azure Virtual Desktop pilot within Uniting’s new Azure landing zone. The pilot deployed Azure Virtual Desktop and two major Uniting applications to a limited number of users to validate extensive user and performance testing. 

The Azure Virtual Desktop pilot quickly demonstrated technical fit. Business users immediately noticed improvements to their daily work. With this foundation, a business-IT alliance advocated for an organization-wide adoption of Azure Virtual Desktop. 

Fast-tracked collaboration with cubesys led to a full deployment and on-time delivery without disruption of services. With a green light from Uniting’s leadership, cubesys designed and implemented a production Azure Virtual Desktop environment, oversaw the switch, and provided support as operations adjusted to the deployment. “You could really tell cubesys had done over 100 implementations. They delivered everything within our tight timeframe,” Falck says. “It was really refreshing to work with both cubesys and Microsoft.”

Maintaining reliable uptime for consistent customer service

Change management for the switch to Azure Virtual Desktop was pleasantly straightforward, Falck recalls. The icon users clicked to access their computer workspaces looked different, but everything else remained the same—except performance. Frontline workers immediately noticed the dramatic improvements in uptime, reliability, and speed, and service desk tickets dropped exponentially. For instance, logging in now takes one-sixth of the time with Azure Virtual Desktop. Those minutes, multiplied across thousands of employees, add up to significant productivity gains. 

“Customer issues were sorted, and staff ratings of the change were fantastic. We took that information to the CEO, so it was a top-to-bottom success,” Falck says. 

Clients and customers have a better experience, too. The old server system used to freeze in everyday situations such as checking a client’s address or upcoming appointments, which caused waits as staff sessions were reset. When a customer is seeking help to avoid homelessness, continue living independently at home, or provide a safe home to a child in the foster system, responsiveness is critical. Azure Virtual Desktop enables staff to reliably offer immediate support and focus on their primary responsibilities of caring for customers.

Azure Virtual Desktop’s reliable uptime for vital business applications also allows frontline workers to record care notes without interruption. System searches that used to take minutes now yield results in a few seconds. Advanced searches used to paralyze apps and require an IT reset, but now workers have this functionality at their fingertips. Staff used to keep handwritten notes to avoid constantly freezing apps, “but now they type in all their case notes, confident that the app won’t crash on them,” Oswald says. This results in more comprehensive records that inform ongoing care and services, and it improves regulatory compliance. 

Azure Virtual Desktop provides this seamless experience, regardless of workers’ location. Staff working in the field, home, or office can all spend more time and energy delivering support to the community. “Now people are focusing on their customers versus dealing with administration and system issues,” Falck says. “In short, Azure Virtual Desktop helps our staff help our customers.” 

Saving costs to focus on the mission

Every mission-driven organization has a responsibility to make the best use of its funds to maximize its impact. The Microsoft Cloud supports Uniting’s commitment to do just that.

As the nonprofit transitioned away from its on-premise infrastructure, it decommissioned redundant, outdated solutions. Transitioning away from its increasingly expensive data centers fully funded the switch to Azure. Further, the change eliminated the costly maintenance of legacy infrastructure.   

Azure provides new transparency into the IT budget. On the recommendation of cubesys, Uniting layered the virtual desktop management solution Nerdio onto Azure Virtual Desktop. Nerdio tools provide insights into usage peaks and lulls to simplify performance and cost optimization decisions. For example, Nerdio visualizations showed upticks in business application usage on Friday afternoons and the end of the month, when many staff catch up on administrative tasks like client notes. Nerdio scales up Cloud server capacity during high-demand times and scales down during low usage, such as overnight. 

Nerdio and Azure Virtual Desktop working together saves Uniting 60% on daily usage costs. “We optimize costs without ever sacrificing someone’s ability to do their job,” Falck says. “That concern is solved by working with good partners like cubesys, Microsoft, and Nerdio.”

Gaining flexibility to scale in the cloud

The speed and relative ease of moving from an Azure Virtual Desktop pilot to full production emphasizes the flexibility of the Microsoft Cloud. Any significant changes in on-premise server capacity used to take both ample planning and significant budget, but now Uniting has the freedom to make nimble adjustments to strategy and execution. 

For example, when Uniting realized that remote contract workers' performance was lagging because of routine downtime issues from non-managed servers, Uniting enabled virtual desktops for this team. Even though this step was not on the original project roadmap, “it was a quick pivot because we already knew how to deploy Azure Virtual Desktop,” Falck says. “We could easily solve the problem, removing the cost associated with them not being able to perform their jobs.” 

Azure’s pay-as-you-go scalability enables Uniting to adapt to changing needs. For example, they can seamlessly roll out Azure Virtual Desktop for hundreds of new workers when they acquire an organization or open a new line of business. 

Uniting IT staff are freed up to create value-adding solutions, such as a new Azure-based generative AI-powered digital assistant that helps staff answer procedural and operational questions. “Simplified management processes have reduced the burden on Uniting’s IT team, allowing them to dedicate more time to strategic initiatives that directly support the organization’s mission,” says Astha Singh, Marketing Lead at cubesys. “This efficiency ensures their technology not only runs smoothly but also contributes to delivering better services to the people and communities they serve.” 

Falck agrees. “The cubesys-Uniting-Microsoft collaboration paves the way for transformative change,” he says. “Together, we’re demonstrating how technology can be a force for good, enabling organizations to focus on what truly matters—making a difference in people’s lives.”

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