Wesley Mission Migrates 18 TB of Sensitive Data, Enhances Data Resilience with AvePoint Fly, Cloud Backup
Success Highlights
Successfully migrated 18 TB of data from legacy systems using AvePoint Fly
Enabled disaster recovery and data integrity for 100+ GB of sensitive information
Improved data governance and compliance with regulatory requirements
Simplified data recovery and classification across complex organisational structures
Location Sydney, Australia
Industry Not-for-profit
Platform Microsoft 365
Wesley Mission is a community services organisation based in Sydney, Australia, serving more than 160,000 people annually. With a legacy spanning over 200 years, Wesley Mission operates as both a church and a not-for-profit provider of critical services across New South Wales. Their programs include foster and home care, housing and homelessness support, retirement care, mental health services, suicide prevention, and disability support.
Critical Needs
- Transition from standard on-premises backups to cloud-based backup solutions
- Ensure compliance with strict data retention and governance requirements
- Minimise business costs to maximise funding for mission-critical community services
The Challenge
When Wesley Mission changed their technology stack, they went from leveraging on-site data backups to dealing with cloud-based data requirements. Scott Kidson, Information Systems Service Operations Manager at Wesley Mission, shares that they needed a solution that would integrate seamlessly with their existing environment.
“We moved from a reasonably convoluted and layer-on-layer in-house storage array to a cloud-managed platform,” Scott says, adding that this transition was a pillar of their digital transformation strategy.
However, fragmented data served as a significant hurdle to their migration journey. While Wesley Mission’s organisational structure has evolved through multiple business transitions and acquisitions, their data pathways have not kept pace. Files were stored inconsistently – some by location, others by outdated business units – making it difficult for users to locate information.
Regulatory compliance was also a foundational concern for Wesley Mission, as maintaining accreditation is essential to continue delivering critical services across various sectors and marginalised communities.
Data is a massive key to us providing intervention services. Having the ability to scale and having data integrity means we can use that data to provide better learnings on how our clients are managed, and potentially we can find areas where we need to target before we actually see it.
Information Systems Service Operations Manager, Wesley Mission
The AvePoint Solution
After spending four weeks with a previous solution that yielded little progress, the team switched to AvePoint Fly and completed the full migration – spanning multi-terabyte servers and large media files – in just six weeks.
AvePoint Fly also helped resolve data fragmentation issues by enabling Wesley Mission to trace and reassign data ownership, even when departmental reporting lines had already shifted. This ensured continuity and accessibility across the organisation, despite years of structural changes.
Wesley Mission’s decision to leverage AvePoint Cloud Backup was informed by the kind of data vital to their service delivery, not to mention the regulatory compliance essential to their work. Scott says, “We work with everything, from highly sensitive client data to team conversations, policies, procedures, to marketing collateral. We can be doing anything from medical records, criminal records, mental health, and financial data.” Wesley Mission also works across all sectors, which means that they deal with a significant amount of personally identifiable information (PII) and highly confidential data.
Scott shares, “It’s important that we have a strong governance structure. We’ve got regulatory requirements for data retention as well as disaster recovery strategies that mean proactively securing our data is an important and ongoing function.”
While AvePoint Fly enabled seamless data migration from legacy systems, including large media files and complex departmental structures, AvePoint Cloud Backup provided a reliable solution that supported Wesley Mission’s compliance and disaster recovery needs.
“AvePoint solutions have allowed us to shore up our data governance and regulatory compliance,” Scott confirms. “The tools have helped with compliance in data storage and disaster recovery capabilities. AvePoint solutions certainly provide what we need to make sure we’re on our capability pathway for governance.”
Unlike other paid tools that would have offered only migration functionality, AvePoint Fly and AvePoint Cloud Backup have empowered Wesley Mission to gain immeasurable time savings when they successfully migrated hundreds of gigabytes of sensitive data.
Wesley Mission has already seen measurable benefits from AvePoint Fly and Cloud Backup, though they consider themselves early in their adoption journey. According to Scott, the team is actively exploring how to use AvePoint’s data classification and retention tools more fully. Automating data lifecycle management, such as setting rules for archiving or deleting unused files, will be a key focus moving forward as the organisation streamlines internal data practices and reduces long-term storage costs.
The Road Ahead
Wesley Mission remains committed to strengthening its data governance to manage long-term retention requirements more efficiently. As Scott explains, the organisation handles sensitive data, particularly in areas like child adoption and care, that must be retained for up to 25 years. Automating data retention policies will therefore be key to keeping their data footprint lean and compliant.
By setting clear rules for archiving and deleting data once it’s no longer required, Wesley Mission aims to reduce storage costs and improve operational efficiency. With data volumes expected to grow, Scott emphasises the importance of building a future-ready strategy that balances compliance, cost control, and sustainability.
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