Not many places on Earth can impact so many lives at once.

Home to more than 2.6 million Australians across four states, and almost 200 birds and native fish, the Murray Darling Basin is the largest and most complex river system in Australia.

Urban and rural communities depend on a healthy river system. Not only does it mean over three million Australians have access to fresh, clean drinking water, the tourism opportunities it also gives communities is worth AU$8bn a year.

Managing it is a complex business. The Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) is responsible for planning the entire Basin's water resources and works with the Basin state and territory governments to develop water resource plans.

The MDBA needed to migrate its web-hosting services and content to a new cloud-based provider. And because of the impact that a project like this would have on the Basin and its communities, the migration had to be completed in just one go.

MDBA’s current web-hosting services were complex, and all issues needed to be resolved before any migration could take place.

Taking inspiration from the Basin’s far-reaching system, Datacom’s approach too involved a wide-spanning team. Our virtual team of experts ranged from the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) to New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, with each member and team playing a pivotal role, including managing the project, and providing Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Drupal architecture and setup.

We helped to design the new website using Drupal, an open source content management system (CMS), prepared the migration plan and migrated the website content to AWS infrastructure.

The migration of the MDBA website to AWS has reduced MDBA’s hosting costs and provided a more flexible, scalable and robust design.

It means millions of Australians and thousands of businesses across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, and in the ACT, can continue to benefit from the fresh water and business opportunities of the Murray Darling Basin.

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