Customer Story: Icon Group
When Icon Group faced growth and global expansion, they called the experts.
Customer
Icon Group
Industry
Healthcare
Solutions
Azure Migration
Managed Azure
The Challenge
Planning for growth in a highly regulated environment.
Mark Holmes had only been with the healthcare organisation, Icon Group for a few years when he found himself presiding over a strategic review of the entire group’s cloud infrastructure. Any self-respecting Technology Director knows that the opportunity to actually plan for growth (rather than react to it) is not to be wasted. So, he called in Macquarie Cloud Services to help make a plan.
Icon Group is Australia’s largest dedicated cancer care provider, delivering end-to-end oncology services internationally. Not only had the group expanded globally into Singapore, Mainland China, Hong Kong and New Zealand, but several parts of the business also operate in the heavily regulated pharmacy vertical overseen by Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).
It was a migration project that simply had to work perfectly.
Global
expansion
Rapid international growth required a scalable cloud foundation.
Regulatory requirements
Pharmacy workloads overseen by the TGA demanded secure, audit-ready infrastructure.
Resilience & availability
Disaster recovery and multi-location availability were essential business requirements.
Compressed timelines
Some workloads needed to be migrated rapidly due to external regulatory changes.
“We knew we wanted to be on Azure. We knew what we
wanted in terms of disaster recovery, availability in two
geographical locations and our other business
requirements. But what we really wanted was a partner
with expertise, who’s done this sort of project before.”
Mark Holmes
Head of IT Infrastructure, Icon Group
The Solution
A phased Azure migration delivered with speed and confidence.
Macquarie Cloud Services advised rolling the migration out across two timelines. The first phase required migrating workloads from Icon’s existing Launch platform to Azure, supported by heavy investment in planning and testing due to the regulatory nature of the environment. The second track needed to move much more rapidly, as it supported pharmacy dispensing workloads subject to external regulatory changes.
As Mark puts it “So it started out as ‘We think we can do this in Azure. We’re testing it ourselves in Azure. It’s looking like it works well’ and then suddenly it became, ‘we need to do this very quickly because we’ve only got two months left.’ Macquarie Cloud Services were able to work really quickly to provision those services and get them all set up in an automated way. That allowed us to keep that pace and get the project completed in the compressed timeline.”
The partnership also supported internal capability uplift through collaboration and skills development. “It’s definitely been a collaborative approach. We see the need for our cloud skills to continue growing internally. We’ve brought in a principal cloud engineer into the team who’s working well with the Macquarie Cloud Services team, progressing those designs further, fine tuning them here and there. That lets me offer natural skills progression for my team.”
A scalable Azure platform delivered with expert guidance, automation and ongoing optimisation.
Key Results
Secure, scalable cloud infrastructure built for expansion.
Icon Group now has highly reliable, available and – most importantly – secure cloud infrastructure across the various companies and operations within the group. The time taken to strategically plan for growth has delivered both a platform and a partner Icon can be confident in.
The solution included:
Azure landing zone
Best-practice architecture aligned to Icon’s specific application needs.
Automated deployment
Managed VM images and rollout processes enabled fast delivery without security compromise.
Phased migration delivery
Fully project-managed migrations supported both planned and accelerated timelines.
Ongoing optimisation
Regular architecture, network, security and consumption reviews as the environment matures.
Regulatory confidence
Secure infrastructure supports audit needs and heavily regulated pharmacy workloads.
Trusted partnership
A responsive technology partner provides confidence to scale remotely and sustainably.
Technical Solution Overview
A best-practice Azure foundation for specialised workloads.
- Azure environment with landing zone, aligned to defined best practices but incorporating Icon’s specific application needs.
- Icon-specific rollout process to support fast application deployment without cutting corners or opening up security holes.
- Fully project managed phased migrations.
- A variety of Managed Virtual Machine images and site-specific configurations to help Icon get the best value for money.
- Ongoing architecture, network, security and consumption reviews as the environment grows and matures.
“It’s definitely been a collaborative approach. We’ve
brought in a principal cloud engineer into the team who’s
working well with the Macquarie Cloud Services team,
progressing those designs further, fine tuning them here
and there. That lets me offer natural skills progression for
my team.”
Mark Holmes
Head of IT Infrastructure, Icon Group
How Macquarie Cloud Services helped Icon Group.
Finding a true technology partner in Macquarie Cloud Services allowed Icon Group to build a cloud infrastructure that will serve their expansion.
Contact us
Talk to an expert.
- 1800 004 943
- Level 15 2 Market Street, Sydney, NSW, Australia