It was the first city in Slovakia to get rid of its outdated infrastructure and started renting IT as a service.
As documents rotated through the City on paper, this often led to lengthy responses and ultimately late responses from the City. Therefore, the city leadership was faced with the challenge of digital transformation - moving from a paper-based organization to a modern digital city in order to optimize and streamline processes over the information system available to city staff and to improve and expedite services to the city's citizens.
Before the actual optimization, which will be visible to the citizens of the city, it was necessary to change the functioning of internal IT and operations, which had not been invested in for a long time. One of the basic requirements of the city management was to get a perfect overview of IT costs, which they could accurately predict and plan for.
In the initial phase, Banská Bystrica decided to go the hybrid infrastructure route. This means that employees continued to work in an environment that was familiar to them and gradually added new Office 365 services and applications.
A significant step towards a change in the approach to IT was the decision of the city management not to build a classical server room for the operation of the Municipal Information System (MIS), but instead to use the cloud service Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), namely Microsoft Azure.
Due to the large number of PCs running Windows XP, the City did not proceed to their urgent replacement because such a move would have consumed a lot of financial resources and the change would not have resulted in a significant improvement in efficiency. Instead, a server farm was built in Microsoft Azure with remote access to each user's virtual machine. This provided staff with a new working environment in which they use the Office 365 platform in addition to the Municipal Information System (MIS).
Increased employee productivity and cooperation
Cost savings
Improving accessibility of services to citizens
Increased security
The transformation of the Municipal Information System (MIS) and supporting elements into a service-oriented environment had an immediate effect in improving availability, security and performance. In addition, the service is inherently scalable and can adapt immediately to the needs of the Municipality.
Thanks to this innovative approach of the management of the City of Banská Bystrica, it was possible to successfully build a platform that has significantly streamlined the functioning of the city. Microsoft Azure and Office 365 not only save the city costs, but also significantly increase the productivity and collaboration of the employees of the City Office.
One of the key things the city focused on was safety. The former server infrastructure did not provide the level of security offered by Microsoft's data centres running Azure.
„We always try to take an innovative approach to designing solutions for our customers, and from a range of the latest technologies we select those that we believe will be best for them. I am therefore particularly proud that the first Slovak city that we have completely moved to the cloud is Banská Bystrica - the place where SOFTIP began writing its history years ago,“ said SOFTIP's Technical Director Ján Schwarz.
State and local government
Cloud Solutions
I am glad that we have found a partner who shares our vision and together we have prepared a modern environment for future generations.
Ján Nosko
Mayor of the city
Banská Bystrica
The use of the cloud is financially incomparably more advantageous compared to the costs of upgrading and subsequent management of your own hardware.
Martin Adamec
Head of the Municipal Office
Banská Bystrica
Top cloud solutions with guaranteed services of an experienced Cloud Solution Provider.
Member of the Board of Directors, CTO and Director of CES Division
SOFTIP
Operations Director, CES Division
SOFTIP