Case Study: Northern Beaches Council achieves resilient, always-on municipal services in flood-prone terrain with VMware SD-WAN

Northern Beaches Council Designs WANs for Integrity in Challenging Terrain

Northern Beaches Council is the local government for Northern Sydney’s coastal region (population ~266,000) that must provide always-on digital services across difficult, disaster-prone terrain. Recurrent bushfires and the 2022 floods repeatedly damaged fiber infrastructure, disrupting broadband access for residents, remote workers, first responders and municipal facilities like libraries and childcare centers—so the council needed a resilient, redundant WAN that would keep services available during outages.

To solve this, the council worked with partner Coevolve to deploy VMware SD-WAN and VMware Edge Network Intelligence paired with Starlink satellite connectivity, avoiding reliance on flood-prone fiber and adding AI/ML-based network monitoring. The rollout delivered the intended resilient, redundant connectivity, restored reliable access for constituents and emergency services, and enabled smart-city pilots (smart parking, soil monitoring, street-lighting) while positioning Northern Beaches as a leader in municipal digitization.

Northern Beaches Council

Michael Turner

CIO