In the Spotlight: Councils take back control of IT

Background

South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Councils work in partnership to deliver shared services across both districts, supporting more than 650 employees and 74 elected councillors.

After operating under a fully outsourced IT model for nearly a decade, the councils identified a growing need for greater flexibility, control and responsiveness in their technology environment. Their long-term managed services contract was nearing its end, and a new Technology Strategy recommended bringing IT services back in-house.

According to Simon Turner, IT and digital services manager at South & Vale, the existing contract structure had become increasingly restrictive as council technology needs evolved.

“Our IT needs at the start of the contract were very different to what we need today. Ultimately, we needed the flexibility to be able to change our technology stack at pace when business needs required us to,” he said.

Challenge

Transitioning away from a fully outsourced IT model presented significant operational and technical complexity.

The councils needed to:

• Build an in-house IT capability
• Migrate away from legacy provider-managed systems
• Modernise infrastructure and end-user devices
• Move critical workloads into Microsoft Azure
• Avoid disruption to frontline council services
• Complete the migration before the existing contract ended in September 2025

The environment also included several highly embedded legacy systems, including one application that had been in use for around 30 years.

At the same time, the councils wanted to standardise and modernise their technology estate while maintaining continuity for staff and residents.

Solution

South & Vale partnered with Node4 to design and implement a new Microsoft-based IT ecosystem focused on flexibility, security and long-term scalability.

The transformation programme included several major workstreams.

Node4 conducted a full review of the councils’ Microsoft 365 environment, helping ensure security, governance and alignment with Microsoft best practices.

The councils also migrated 800 laptops from the previous provider’s network, rebuilding and reimaging devices onto a new environment using Microsoft Intune Autopilot and a standardised Windows 11 deployment package.

Node4 deployed Microsoft Teams Calling to replace the councils’ legacy telephony platform, integrating the solution with the contact centre environment and supporting nearly 800 users.

As part of the exit from the previous managed service arrangement, 14 legacy servers were migrated from external datacentres into Microsoft Azure.

Turner described this as the most critical stage of the project due to the importance of the applications involved. “One of the applications we were migrating is 30 years old and highly embedded across the authorities, so making it work properly was complex,” he said.

The migration was completed through detailed planning and close collaboration between the councils’ internal teams and Node4 specialists.

Results

The councils completed the migration programme ahead of schedule, exiting the legacy environment before their original target date.

“By the end of June, people were no longer logging in to the old systems. In July, everything was switched off, and we were working in our own environment,” said Turner.

Key outcomes included:

• Migration of 800 devices to Windows 11 in four weeks
• Successful migration of 14 legacy servers into Azure
• No reported downtime or telephony disruption during cutover
• Simplified IT management and licensing
• Improved flexibility and faster deployment of new technology
• Reduced reliance on legacy outsourced infrastructure

The new environment has also enabled South & Vale to take a more proactive approach to digital innovation and service improvement.

The councils are now exploring further use of Microsoft technologies, including Copilot and Power BI, with Node4 continuing to support governance and future platform development.

Next steps

Having completed the transition to its new Azure-based environment, South & Vale is now focused on expanding digital capabilities and modernising services incrementally. Future plans include exploring AI-enabled tools, further use of Microsoft cloud services and continued development of data and analytics capabilities.

The councils also continue to work with Node4 on specialist support services, including database administration, helping provide access to expertise without the need for additional full-time internal resource.