Elanor Investments

Elanor Investors Group (Elanor) is an ASX listed Australian real estate funds management business which has been managing over $2.5 billion of assets across Australia and New Zealand since 2009. Their key objective is to identify and originate real estate backed investments that deliver strong returns for both Elanor’s funds management capital partners and security holders. The business was relying on a combination of dated on-premises infrastructure and private cloud, which was being undermanaged by a third-party service provider. As a financial services company, reducing operational risk and maintaining a high level of governance and security is a key focus area. Elanor needed a reliable system, along with an IT partner that would help create and deliver a technology strategy to support the business and align with their strategic objectives. Looking for a reliable foundation to ensure greater security, responsiveness and flexibility – the business made the decision to migrate its infrastructure to Azure and called on the team at Brennan for support.

The summary

Industry:

Finance

Country:

Australia

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Business Challenge:

The IT environment and support structure that was set up previously was no longer meeting the business’ requirements of today, specifically in the areas of business continuity, risk management, proactive engagement and employee productivity.

Solution:

Transition to Azure cloud and Modern Workplace, designed, built and managed by the team at Brennan.

Results:

A transformed environment, enhanced productivity, reliable support and improved security posture with a bolstered business continuity process. The solution has also improved the business’ corporate governance and reduced their risk from technology.

The Situation

Elanor was operating with a hybrid technology infrastructure that was struggling to meet the changing needs of the business. Aging on-premises hardware was presenting an increased risk, and the private cloud platform didn’t provide the flexibility and agility that a leading financial services company would need. The business also relied on dated ISDN phone lines that were at the end of their useful life and preventing adoption of more modern communication services. Unfortunately, the overall set-up hadn’t grown effectively with the business, and the business was now looking for a partner that could implement a solution that would transform the existing environment and cater for future technology developments and secure the business from any risk.

The Challenge

Elanor was facing several challenges with regards to its IT infrastructure. The current support structure didn’t provide benefits of a modern offering, such as self-service, and automated workflows, along with artificial intelligence machine learning and advanced analytics and reporting, providing complete transparency. They were also looking for better service and relationship governance, allowing for service escalations and ongoing improvement opportunities.

Accessing content from the network was unreliable, and staff’s productivity had suffered as a result, and it was affecting the organisation’s ability to service its high net-worth customers.

For Elanor’s internal IT team, onboarding new staff was a manual that took longer than necessary, as was restoring data. Also, when the business wanted to add storage space, it was both costly and time-consuming, which prevented the business from being agile and responsive. Realising the pressing need for a new solution, the business decided to migrate to Azure, and set about finding a reliable partner.

Elanor was also experiencing inadequate levels of control over their cloud environment. Having previously moved into a private cloud instance with their incumbent provider, they quickly realised they lacked autonomy to make strategic changes to the platform, which was being undermanaged and not securely protected.

Brennan had the in-depth experience to do this project, and provided really detailed planning of what needed to be done, from one to one hundred. They were very good, very professional and very knowledgeable.

Franz Tanamal, Group Systems Analyst, Elanor

The Solution

After meeting with several prospective partners, Elanor chose the team at Brennan to transform and manage their IT, on Azure. Brennan identified the following requirements:

Become a cloud first business to embrace mobility.
Improve the security posture across the full environment.
Reduce dependency on traditional infrastructure.
Reduce shadow IT across the business.
Move to the public cloud to allow for greater flexibility around management.
Implement a reliable business continuity solution.

Brennan’s solution included a migration to Azure, to future-proof the company and give them a higher level of control and flexibility over the management of their data. This was an end-to-end upgrade of the environment. It involved refreshing their entire operating platform by migrating to Azure, and implementing an Intune deployment, a Cloud Access Security Broker, Azure Site Recovery, Vulnerability Management, Advanced Cloud Cyber Security, Endpoint Detection and Response, SD-WAN and a Modern Workplace deployment. Elanor’s new environment and their people are now supported by Brennan’s 24/7 Managed Services capability.

The Result

The upgrade was a significant success and Elanor is now enjoying a new level of confidence that their IT is being automatically patched and scanned for vulnerabilities. This means greater assurance their environment is secure and resilient for reliable uptime and maximum productivity.

The benefits experienced by both the IT team and other staff have been considerable. Employees now have access to a more secure and reliable IT infrastructure, and support is responsive, visible, and reliable. Improvements in the employee experience have translated into better customer service.

For the IT team, resources can be added very quickly and economically, ensuring new levels of flexibility and agility. Staff onboarding is more streamlined and faster, enhancing the overall employee experience. Profile builds that previously took four hours are now taking thirty minutes. Through addressing some of the inefficiencies they were able to reinvest in better technology.

There is now an automated and robust disaster recovery process in place, which has significantly decreased the risk of data loss.

Security has improved, too. Following an Azure security review, we were able to consult and implement controls that bolster the overall security on the platform. The team now receives automated alerts of risky behaviour across the environment. Operational risk has therefore diminished significantly, improving the company’s overall corporate governance.

“We now have a far better support turnaround. The Brennan team is so much more knowledgeable, and visible and responsive, and this has helped both our team and our broader people,” says Shrija Pradhan, Elanor’s Business Operations Manager.

Elanor are also now kicking off several follow-on projects which includes a migration to a modern file sharing and collaboration platform, building out their new intranet, reducing costs of their mobile fleet and improving security through security maturity assessments against industry and government standards and ongoing security monitoring.

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