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FII Case Study

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Business Challenges:

  • The on-premise legacy system used by the provincial and federal agencies to provide funding to Canadian companies was experiencing a number of technical and functional limitations.  Jointly, the organizations recognized the need to provision an updated system based on modern technologies.

Solution: Funding Management

  • After providing managed service functions to FII/NRCan for 10 years, Avocette was chosen to develop and implement a modern replacement to the legacy Funding Management System.

    • Services Provided:
      • Custom Cloud Development
      • Managed Services
    • Technologies Utilized:
      • Microsoft Azure
      • .NET
      • Angular, Bootstrap
      • DevOps

Outcome:

  • The successful implementation of a new cloud-based solution, which won NRCan a departmental award for Impact Award – Achieving Results: Policy, Regulatory, Program And Service Excellence. In addition to the gains achieved through modernization, the dynamic scalability of the MS Azure based cloud solution has increased both cost effectiveness and user satisfaction
  • Avocette continues to provide AMMS Services to support the application for both organizations.

LGIS Case Study

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Business Challenges:

  • The client was looking to transform and modernize an existing legacy system with a modular based system.

Solution:

  • A web-based application that supports internal and external users for multiple grant types, covering recipients such as Local Governments, First Nations, and Societies. The entire lifecycle of a grant program is covered from online application to approvals, claims, monitoring and reporting.

    • Services Provided:
      • Manages Services
      • Project Services
      • Integration
    • Technologies Utilized:
      • Sohema
      • DevOps
      • SQL Server
      • Web Services

Outcome:

  • LGIS has been in production for over 10 years and has been adopted by other Ministries for the handling of their grants.
  • 10 programs implemented in the last 18 months, as opposed to 3-4 months per program previously. The new solution allows the Canadian Govt (Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program) to invest & effectively manage $3.917 billion in B.C. infrastructure over 10 years.

Avocette: MSPCV and SOC 2021

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What is MSPCV certification?

Managed Service Providers Cloud Verify (MSPCV) is a certification for cloud and managed services practitioners worldwide. It is based on the 10 control objectives of the Unified Certification Standard for Cloud & MSPs (UCS) and is the oldest certification program for cloud computing and managed services providers. The MSPCV was the first of its kind created specifically for the managed services and cloud industry. Every certification comes with a written report with the entire process documented, validated and signed by a third-party accounting firm. The MSPCV has been reviewed by governmental agencies and regulatory bodies across the globe and is used and accepted in 5 continents around the world.

What does MSPCV assess?


  • Objective 1: Governance

  • Objective 2: Policies and Procedures

  • Objective 3: Confidentiality and Privacy

  • Objective 4: Change Management

  • Objective 5: Service Operations Management

  • Objective 6: Information Security

  • Objective 7: Data Management

  • Objective 8: Physical Security

  • Objective 9: Billing and Reporting

  • Objective 10: Corporate Health

How are these objectives assessed?

The MSPAlliance certification process includes thorough readiness assessments and gap analysis based on the best practices in the industry. The results are then examined by an independent third-party accounting firm for verification and signing of a public-facing report.

What is SOC 2 Type 1 Certification?

Service Organization Controls (SOC) are a series of standards designed to help measure how well a given service organization conducts and regulates its information. The purpose of SOC standards is to provide confidence and peace of mind for organizations when they engage third-party vendors. A SOC-certified organization has been audited by an independent certified public accountant who determined the firm has the appropriate SOC safeguards and procedures in place.

More specifically, SOC 2 is designed for service providers storing customer data in the cloud. It requires companies to establish and follow strict information security policies and procedures encompassing the security, availability, processing, integrity, and confidentiality of customer data.

What Does the SOC 2 Type 1 Audit Examine?

SOC 2 looks at five Trust Factors of secure data processing and storage. Demonstrating proficiency across one or more of these criteria is an attestation to the privacy and security controls:


  • Security

  • Availability

  • Processing Integrity

  • Confidentiality

  • Privacy

What does this compliance mean to Avocette’s clients?

SOC 2 Type 1 compliance assures our customers that we have best-in-class safeguards and procedures in place to ensure the security of their information. Avocette has been in business for over 43 years serving all levels of government (Federal, Public Sector and Municipal) providing our clients with trusted service and commitment. SOC 2 Type 1 compliance demonstrates that Avocette’s security policies, measures, and procedures rigorously protect the consumer and their data with oversight of an independent third party assessment.

Who is MSPAlliance?

MSPAlliance is a global industry association and accrediting body for the Cyber Security, Cloud Computing and Managed Services Provider (MSP) industry. Established in 2000 with the objective of helping MSPs become better MSPs. Today, MSPAlliance has more than 30,000 cloud computing and managed service provider corporate members across the globe and works in a collaborative effort to assist its members, along with foreign and domestic governments, on creating standards, setting policies and establishing best practices.

Project Review: The Importance of Managed Services to Meet the Challenges of Modernizing

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Back view of male employee speaking on video call with diverse colleagues on online briefing with laptop at home.

A Crown corporation in British Columbia, working in partnership with a federal agency based in Ontario, to supply funding to groups developing initiatives that invest in a key British Columbia industry. The two organizations were administering grants using an old legacy website application whose design was heavily structured on a paper-based system and associated processes. As a result, the Funding Management System (FMS) had several workflow inefficiencies with updates and changes to the system requiring significant downtime.

The decision was taken to completely redevelop the application and leverage modern technologies. A comprehensive assessment was initiated to determine the key client drivers; identifying security, flexibility and operating budget. The assessment also focused on how the new technology and functionality could integrate with business processes. Once these requirements were identified and baselined, the project team worked on determining an option that was best for the client. Consideration was given to efficiencies in cost, flexibility to cope with fluctuating user numbers, and future-proofing the system to keep up with technology innovations. Several challenges were also identified, which included ensuring consistent communication despite time differences and geography, having a stable platform for collaboration, and being able to effectively adopt an Agile approach.

After the assessment, it was determined that a cloud-native architecture was the best fit for the FMS solution. By using a cloud-native solution, benefits such as scalability and availability can be better leveraged. It allows the ability to practice Agile and DevOps Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) Infrastructure automation. Also environment creation can be scripted, which brings in benefits of increased productivity, greater consistency, and reduced costs.

IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS

Fixed Completion Date

The grants are allocated at set intervals throughout the year. The upgraded system needed to be in place by a set date to accommodate the start of their grant submission process.

Solution:

Requirements were grouped into different areas to start demonstrations and continue these throughout the design phase. These included configuration screens, proponent screens, and funder screens. This allowed the development team to build out certain parts of the system as the timelines progressed.

Transparency & Communication

The project involved multiple stakeholders in different locations, time zones, and shifting project teams, all of which could potentially slow the project’s progress.

Solution:

Microsoft Teams was used to tackle communication and transparency concerns. It provides a single platform for communication that can be accessed by all key project stakeholders in BC and Quebec. It also retains historical conversations between the group, which meant staffing changes did not stall the project.

Pre-Existing Grant Allocations

The grant allocation process spans multiple periods over the course of a single year. The cutover from the existing system to the new one needed to be seamless.

Solution:

We were able to launch the new system at the start of the new grant allocation period meaning that there was no need to migrate data to the new system. The project plan was carefully created to achieve this.

KEY FINDINGS

The Importance of an Agile Approach

The primary achievement was taking a long-standing application and rewriting it to reflect modern web application standards, update to the latest business requirements, and successfully deliver these in time for the fixed launch date of the 2020/2021 call for funding applications. Our Agile development approach also identified some ‘value-added’ opportunities for improvements, such as the dynamic ‘track changes’ feature for client reporting.

Collaboration is key

Collaboration was important to the success of this project. Every opportunity was taken to leverage the team tools that are part of the Azure DevOps environment. Status Meeting notes, Design documents, and anything that required discussion was placed on the site wiki for all members to review. Heavy use was made of the Kanban-style board with all work clearly identified as tickets on a board. Multiple boards were set up to match team functions so that boards, and the information presented, could stay clean and focused.

Pacing

The use of the DevOps platform introduces interesting dynamics. Generally, it could be said that the platform’s full use helped all teams, disciplines, and stakeholders involved in the project. However, the benefits are not even. One of the key learning points was the importance of developing methods, tracking feedback, and managing resources (both internal and external) so that the project could move forward smoothly for all team members.

CONCLUSION

The new system is more intuitive with deploying changes with only 3 minutes of downtime versus the 30 minutes needed with the old system. The feedback from test users was positive, indicating that the system was more intuitive, cleaner, and more modern interface. The Azure cloud technology is constantly advancing with new developments daily. We were able to leverage them and make them part of the build and ensure the client would maintain the most up to date technology into the future.

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