Cenitex migrates critical public sector workloads with zero disruption

Cenitex is a Victorian Government-owned IT services provider serving departments and agencies across the state. It needed to exit an aging data center as legacy operating systems, rising costs, and increasing complexity created risk. In line with Cenitex’s Modern Cloud Strategy, the move also created an opportunity to adopt a more agile, consumption-based cloud model, reduce technical debt, build cloud capability, and support more customers.
Like many organizations with mature IT estates, Cenitex identified opportunities to strengthen documentation and clarify ownership for some applications. Several underpinned essential government services in highly secure environments, making continuity and security critical throughout the move. Cenitex sought a partner with experience in large-scale, mission-critical migrations that could also prepare its teams for future modernization.

Cenitex worked with AWS and AWS Partner Mantel to securely migrate workloads from its data center to the cloud and modernize its IT operations. The engagement combined AWS support through its VMware funding program and Australia’s Whole-of-Government Agreement (WOGA) with Mantel’s local migration expertise and hands-on enablement. “AWS and Mantel understood this project wasn’t simply about dropping our servers into the cloud but uplifting our organization through a holistic partnership that transformed our IT operations,” says Paul Kruspe, director of Transformation at Cenitex.

Drawing on Mantel’s experience across hundreds of cloud migrations, Cenitex and Mantel began with a discovery process focused on application complexity and service availability risk. The teams used the findings to prioritize rehosting and re-platforming activities, maintaining delivery speed while managing risk. “That discovery phase was a really robust process, giving us a lot of confidence in the migration of hundreds of virtual machines,” says Vimal Patel, program integration manager at Cenitex.

Alongside the migration, Cenitex began upskilling its IT teams through virtual and in-person training. Engineers used AWS Skill Builder to gain practical cloud knowledge and validate their existing skills. Mantel reinforced this training through in-person “lunch-and-learn” sessions that engineers could attend during their lunch breaks.

“Much of the best learning comes through experience. By working side by side with Cenitex, we helped its teams build practical cloud skills throughout the migration,” says Andre Morgan, partner–Cloud at Mantel.

This upskilling complemented the hands-on experience Cenitex teams gained during Phase 1 of its data center migration, which involved moving 373 virtual servers to AWS and decommissioning 800 workloads. These included JKE and JCare, two critical DJCS applications. Cenitex moved JCare, a prison medical records system, to AWS with zero disruption.

AWS Transform MGN supported the migration of VMware workloads to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, while Cenitex used Amazon GuardDuty and AWS Security Hub to secure its environment. Cenitex also became the first customer to establish an AWS landing zone in the AWS Asia Pacific (Melbourne) Region, creating a cloud foundation for current and future workloads.

Cenitex can now better support Victorian Government reform and help departments and agencies deliver and maintain critical applications. By reducing the operational constraints of its legacy environment, Cenitex can respond more effectively to changing customer needs and provide more consistent service delivery. “Running on AWS has modernized our approach and helped our teams work more efficiently,” says Kruspe.

With Phase 1 of its migration complete, Cenitex is extending these gains across the organization. Engineers now work more autonomously and collaborate directly with the customers they support, strengthening relationships and moving from a break-fix approach toward a solution-focused way of working.

Furthermore, Cenitex is positioned to support more customers as it continues to modernize its operations. The company is also exploring emerging technologies such as AI and FinOps and opportunities to consolidate duplicate applications across Victorian Government agencies, helping deliver greater value to taxpayers.

“We have built strong momentum and laid a solid foundation for the next stage of transformation,” says Kruspe. Cenitex is now progressing to Phase 2, which involves migrating the remaining workloads for additional Victorian Government departments to Cenitex Modern Cloud.