Outback Stores
Adelaide-headquartered IT service provider Calibre One has extricated retail management company Outback Stores from its “tangled” IBM-based infrastructure.
The four-year project saw Calibre One remove the non-profit’s seven-year-old IBM server equipment, which was being managed by another IT provider.
Outback Stores currently manages 48 community stores across the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia and aims to improve the health, employment and economy of remote Indigenous communities.
However, Outback Stores' poorly functioning IT infrastructure was creating a lot of inefficiencies for the retail stores, leaving it with high costs and poor margins.
“Our whole IT setup was a tangled web, where one thing relied on another that all led back to that service provider at the time,” Richard Mead, Outback Stores Group merchandise and IT manager said.
“Calibre One clearly articulated how they could help us, which was a different path to the one we were on. They were very good at breaking down the vision into what it actually meant and they supported our vision with the appropriate expert technical advice.”
During the project, Calibre One moved Outback Stores from Exchange on-premises to Exchange Online; from Open Volume Microsoft Licensing to Office 365 applications, and from file server to SharePoint online.
Calibre One also deployed a business-grade Telstra internet and Biamp video conferencing, while replacing its ShoreTel IP Phone system.
This saw Calibre One move legacy SIP trunks onto Microsoft 365 Telstra Calling in Teams phone system. It also rolled out a series of meeting rooms using Microsoft Teams Room devices and Sony 85-inch panel displays, which included converting all users to Poly headsets and handsets at desks for all office-based staff.
To bolster Outback Stores' security posture, Calibre One removed its five-year-old WatchGuard Firewalls across the 48 stores and head office, deploying Fortinet NextGen Firewalls with SD-WAN as a replacement.
According to Calibre One, this improved Outback Stores' WAN optimisation and redundancy between the Satellite and 4G connectivity (where available) at each of the locations.
Calibre One installed modern authentication protocols across all systems and applications including the introduction of multi-factor authentication, as well as the introduction of KnowBe4 security awareness training for users and a series of other requirements to meet Federal government security requirements.
It also deployed a Barracuda cloud archive solution for the non-profit's servers left on-premises and for their servers and Office365 solution in Azure/Office 365.
Following the transformation process, Outback Stores was able to reduce its management fees applied to the stores through improved efficiency, Mead said.
“When you're dealing with 48 sites in the most remote spots in the country, modernising and upgrading network security and reliability is very important,” he explained.
“Calibre One clearly articulated how they could help us, which was a different path to the one we were on. They were very good at breaking down the vision into what it actually meant and they supported our vision with the appropriate expert technical advice.”
The transformation process took place as Calibre One was acquired by Brisbane-based Telstra partner Azentro, turning it into a 110-person-strong operation with a joint sales backlog of $35 million in 2021.
Darren Gore, head of transformation in the merged Calibre One and Azentro group, said Outback Stores’ cloud journey culminated from a long track record of shared success and trust.
“Over the past four years, our engineers and local Northern Territory account team have collaborated with Outback Stores to deeply understand how IT helps to fulfil its mission,” Gore said.
“We have engaged with Outback Stores at every level to lower its total cost of ownership, harden its security and improve access to services so it can improve the lives and health of Australia’s most remote communities of Indigenous people, now and into the future.”
