24 01732 759725 South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Councils (South & Vale) work in partnership to deliver a range of services across both districts, including planning and building control, waste and recycling and community safety. After nearly a decade of operating under a fully outsourced IT model, South & Vale faced a pivotal moment. Their longterm managed services contract was coming to an end and the Council had a new policy to bring IT in-house. “We’d spent years under a fully managed IT services contract where the provider did all of the work for us,” explains Simon Turner, IT and Digital Services Manager at South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Councils. “The contract simply wasn’t flexible enough to provide the kind of IT that councils need today. There were several partners and other councils within the same contract, so every ask became a negotiation. If we wanted to change something, we needed to get every council on board, as it would be rolled out to them too. Everything took much longer than we wanted.” He adds that this was a problem because the councils’ IT needs today are very different to what they were at the start of the contract. “Ultimately, we needed the flexibility to be able to change our technology stack at pace when business needs required us to. So, we decided to bring everything in-house, as the Councils’ Technology Strategy recommended.” In preparation for the end of the managed service contract in September 2025, Simon had spent the previous two years building an in-house IT team and laying the foundations for a modern, future‑ready IT ecosystem. “We had deployed Microsoft 365 in 2015, so we wanted to stay with the Microsoft suite,” he explains. “Our in-house team had plenty of technical skills, but we knew the migration would be complex, so we wanted to find an expert Microsoft partner to ensure best practices and a smooth migration. We went through the standard procurement process and Node4 really stood out. They clearly had the skillset to help us build the platform that we envisioned and their many Microsoft accreditations, including being part of the Inner Circle, gave us confidence that they were the right partner.” Multi-faceted transformation Working in close collaboration, Node4 and South & Vale executed a multi-faceted transformation programme, starting with a full audit of the Microsoft 365 environment to ensure security, governance and compliance with Microsoft best practices, How Node4 has helped South & Vale Councils regain control of their IT From legacy to leadership IT
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