Livingstone Shire Council better positioned to weather IT storms

The Livingstone Shire Council local government area sits along the picturesque Capricorn Coast in Central Queensland and covers approximately 11,776 square kilometres. Despite the region’s natural beauty, it is prone to natural disasters, including cyclones, storm tides, bushfires and floods.

During natural disasters, the Council is the region’s coordinating entity responsible for monitoring the situation, issuing public advice and warnings and coordinating evacuations. The Council works in collaboration with emergency services and partner agencies from the Local Disaster Coordination Centre in Yeppoon.

The Council recently updated its disaster recovery strategy with the Nutanix Cloud Platform solution, facilitating more resilient critical IT operations and faster recovery during Queensland’s turbulent storm season.

Due to the critical nature of the Council’s role, Adam Belot, Mayor, Livingstone Shire Council, said prioritising infrastructure resilience was non-negotiable.

“With Nutanix, Livingstone Shire Council can focus on its core mission — serving residents and keeping them safe — whilst ensuring IT resilience,” he said.

The Council was already running the Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure solution for many of its critical applications, along with the Nutanix Prism management console as the control and management plane. The Nutanix Disaster Recovery solution provided enhanced capabilities and increased resilience with lower technical management requirements.

One of the immediate benefits observed by the Council was the ease with which the Council can now test and validate its recovery point and recovery time objectives. The Nutanix solution also served to strengthen the Council’s cyber posture as it enabled faster patching and upgrade cycles for business application systems.

Michael Alp, managing director A/NZ, Nutanix, said the Council was now able to focus on its core business of supporting residents and ensuring their safety when it was needed most.

“Across Australia, regional councils serve a critical role in their communities — particularly during natural disasters where they help coordinate rescue efforts, issue evacuation notifications, and ensure the residents’ safety,” he said. “During these times, if IT systems go down, recovery needs to be a known quantity, it needs to be tested, and it needs to be as simple as possible. With Nutanix, Livingstone Shire Council has peace of mind in its IT resilience so it can focus on what’s most important — keeping residents safe.”

Image: Yeppoon Queensland. Credit: iStock.com/Jemma Ballantyne