Executive summary
Citadel Edge was engaged under its existing sustainment contract to modernise the Objective records and information management environments in Washington and London. The project replaced ageing hardware with a secure and supportable virtualised environment, reducing operational risk and improving reliability for Defence personnel operating overseas.
The upgrades were delivered ahead of schedule and within budget, ensuring continuity of critical information management services.
The challenge
A significant hardware failure within the Washington environment highlighted the risks associated with ageing infrastructure, including reduced vendor support, limited availability of replacement components and increasing service delivery risk.
A post-incident review identified that the London environment was operating on similar infrastructure and faced many of the same risks.
Defence required both environments to be modernised rapidly while maintaining service continuity and meeting security, performance and accreditation requirements.
The solution
Citadel Edge designed and delivered a virtualised infrastructure platform for both overseas sites, migrating the Objective application from legacy UNIX-based infrastructure to a Windows and VMware environment.
The solution included:
- Infrastructure architecture, design and implementation.
- Application upgrade, migration and integration.
- Security accreditation documentation updates.
- Performance, load and operational testing.
- Deployment and stakeholder coordination across Australian and international locations.
The upgraded environment reduced the risks associated with ageing hardware while providing a more reliable platform for ongoing operations.
Implementation
Working closely with Defence and its infrastructure partners, Citadel Edge completed the build, testing, deployment and commissioning of the new environments in both Washington and London.
A key focus of the project was ensuring the infrastructure met the specialised performance requirements of the Objective application, particularly across the storage and database components. Detailed performance and load testing was undertaken to confirm the environments met operational requirements prior to deployment.
The team managed Defence change and release processes, coordinated stakeholders across multiple locations and oversaw transition activities to minimise disruption to end users.
Issues identified during testing were addressed through established engineering and governance processes, enabling both deployments to proceed as planned and without impact to scheduled implementation activities.
Outcomes and impact
The Washington and London environments were successfully migrated to the new virtualised platform with no significant implementation issues and no disruption to operational services during transition.
Key outcomes included:
- Reduced operational risk associated with ageing hardware.
- Improved platform resilience and recoverability.
- Enhanced supportability through modern infrastructure components.
- Successful completion of security and performance assurance activities.
- Delivery ahead of schedule and within budget, achieving all agreed performance, security and operational objectives
Following deployment, the environments were transitioned to ongoing support arrangements, ensuring a smooth handover to business-as-usual operations.
Looking ahead
The upgraded environments provide Defence with a secure and resilient platform for ongoing information management operations across international locations. The modernised infrastructure reduces operational risk, improves resilience and provides a sustainable foundation for future capability needs.
