Monaghan County Council (MCC) provides high quality, sustainable public services to enhance the economic, environmental and cultural wellbeing of a population of over 61,000 in the north of the Republic of Ireland. It employs over 400 staff and supports 18 County Councillors.
Like all County Councils, MCC provides a wide range of public services and facilities, with community responsibilities including housing, roads, transport, urban planning and development, fire services, tourism and local enterprise. To deliver high quality services and make best use of its civic budget, MCC needs an efficient, reliable, cost-effective and scalable digital workspace that can evolve to meet changing community needs and council requirements.
MCC and ProCloud are long-standing partners. Five years ago, ProCloud advised the Council to migrate its email to the Microsoft 365 hybrid cloud platform, which now provides a foundation for critical infrastructure and applications. With a hybrid workforce across multiple sites and the need to provide citizen access to a growing number of services, MCC needed a robust digital workplace to handle the demands of its staff and the community it serves.
To provide a cutting-edge digital workspace for MCC, ProCloud recommended and deployed collaboration tools (Teams and Microsoft 365), VoIP Telephony (Teams IP Telecom), endpoint management (Microsoft Defender), identity and access management (Intune, Azure Active Directory) and virtual desktop infrastructure (Azure Virtual Desktop). ProCloud also provides ongoing support and IT advice to MCC. M365 Business Premium Licensing includes access to the Azure Virtual Desktop, which is used to provide a secure and cost-effective Disaster Recovery solution.
The Microsoft 365-based solution is simple and efficient. From a single dashboard, Brian Barrett and his team can manage multiple features and users. Brian explains: “Different staff need different security policies, because they require access to different systems and apps. We can push out the right security policies from the single pane of glass to all users, custom groups (such as library staff) or individual users. InTune also lets us configure and update laptops automatically. We can apply new software to all devices or a specified subset - for example, a particular team, location or role.”
Before, MCC used to manually apply an image to a new or reissued laptop, maintaining an expensive on-premise server with up-to-date apps and settings. Now, they can buy a new laptop from any provider and plug it in for automatic set-up from InTune.
Most MCC staff use the Council's own devices. But the 18 County Councillors require access to some data and systems from their own devices. ProCloud has set up two tenants for MCC, with a subdomain governing custom Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies for councillors. The Microsoft technology allows Brian's team to create a discrete business profile on councillors’ devices. When their tenure ends, the work profile can be removed without affecting anything else on the councillor's personal device. All the MCC data is kept separate and securely managed.
ProCloud's team has set up Microsoft 365 to authenticate all MCC's core systems, including the main ERP application. The secure, single sign-on functionality provides multi-factor authentication to verify that users working from anywhere are connected via a valid corporate network. Brian Barrett adds, “We also have a lot of PII data governed by our dedicated GDPR team. We keep that secure through internal file servers which also use Microsoft 365 to do the authentication. It's far more secure than just requiring a user password.”
MCC has benefited from cost savings and efficiencies as well as a flexible infrastructure that has kept pace with their needs for five years. The IT team has full control and oversight of what users are doing, guaranteeing that system access and data is secure.
ProCloud's original licensing advice was a key factor in making the Microsoft infrastructure cost effective. ProCloud's Technical Director Brian Supple says, “We advised MCC to go against the trend of assigning E5 licences to all users. We conducted an audit to determine what users required and recommended assigning cheaper Business Premier licences to field-based users and those with minimal system access needs.” Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop is included and offers great value and back-end functionality, including the disaster recovery solution.
Now, the partners are looking ahead together to future technology that will support the next phase of service enhancement. This will include more sophisticated and powerful remote working options and the opportunity to improve citizen services with enhanced and secure data and file sharing.
Brian Barrett says, “There is a very high level of support from ProCloud. We don't think of them as a vendor, they are more of an extended partner. They go the extra mile. It's an established relationship that has great value to us and we want to keep it going.”
ProCloud's Niall O'Donohoe adds, “We have worked together to develop and pilot solutions designed to meet Monaghan County Council's precise needs. They have a fantastic early adopter culture and a real commitment to collaboration. We continually invest in this relationship - we know we need to earn the right every day to be held in trust and high regard by Brian and his team.”
Monaghan County Council benefits from: