City of Utrecht supports secure collaboration and smarter city services with the Microsoft Cloud

With the City of Utrecht growing quickly, city leaders began a push toward digital transformation to keep pace with the increasing population. “The city has a mission to create a sustainable, healthy life for everyone,” says Laura te Lintum, Digital Collaboration Product Owner at the City of Utrecht. “We have many programs to achieve this goal, and want them to be inclusive and accessible for everyone.”

But Utrecht’s city government struggled to manage data that was often scattered across different systems. When city officials needed to partner with external organizations, such as nonprofits, they had to communicate via email or other disjointed means instead of collaborating directly.

When the global pandemic interrupted its usual operations, the city quickly adopted Microsoft Teams to facilitate virtual meetings and Microsoft 365 E5 to enable remote work. Today, city employees continue to enjoy a flexible work environment with access to Azure Virtual Desktop. “They have more freedom of choice in the range of equipment and devices they can use, and come to the office mainly for collaboration,” te Lintum says. “That was an important starting point for our transformation.” 

Meanwhile, the aging network infrastructure drove city officials to move away from managing data on-premises. “We had to make a change, and migrating to Azure was the best option to provide the flexibility and security we needed,” says Monique Velthuizen, IT Director at the City of Utrecht. “It was also an essential step to facilitate the city’s sustainable growth goals.”

Better data security and a predictable budget with Azure

Microsoft Cloud Partner Program partner Axians helped the City of Utrecht build a foundation of hardware and software solutions to facilitate the new network. The city is now in the process of transferring workloads to the Microsoft Azure platform. “Our ambition is that by early next year, we won’t have any on-premises infrastructure left,” says Michiel Boertje, Supply Manager for Hosting at the City of Utrecht. “Everything will be in the cloud environment.”

With the cloud-based pay-per-use model, city officials anticipate more predictability in the IT budget. “We know upfront what the cost will be to maintain the network,” says Ron Visser, IT Manager at the City of Utrecht. “That means the stability of our budget—and of the network uptime—will be higher.”

Another improvement is in security. Before the cloud migration, Utrecht faced security vulnerabilities that were difficult to address with the old infrastructure. “Migrating to Azure helps us comply with local regulations,” says Velthuizen. “That’s an important point for us.”

Adding scalability and flexibility

Using Azure Virtual Desktop, the city has scaled up its number of employees with ease, notes Eddy Zeehuisen, IT Supply Manager at the City of Utrecht. “In just two and a half years, we went from about 5,500 users to more than 7,000 and could accommodate them with Azure, which would not be possible on our previous on-premises infrastructure.”

The migration also empowers city leaders to switch between different providers and multicloud environments. “There is much more flexibility to do that from an Azure environment than from our own datacenter because we’re already in the cloud and there are lots of existing connection points,” says Visser. The city’s employees are using more Microsoft applications because they work seamlessly within the environment, making it easier to build apps, pull in city data, and deliver new public services.

Building a smarter future

Utrecht aspires to develop and provide more smart city services, such as connected sensors to monitor parking spaces, garbage receptacles, EV charging stations, and connected cameras to aid street sweeping trucks. “We’re also looking at how we can collect and analyze data about traffic patterns to minimize impacts during construction projects and other disruptions,” says Boertje.

The city created a 3D model, or digital twin, of Utrecht that maps all structures and the location of utilities, such as water lines, EV charging stations, and parking spaces. Hosted in Azure, the digital twin makes selected data available to citizens through mobile apps. In the future, the city’s cloud-based data foundation will provide a platform for more self-service public services, such as permitting. “We want to make space for neighborhoods to make their own decisions,” says Velthuizen. “The city sets up guidelines and zones, but with digital self-service offerings, citizens who are building or renovating a house will have the freedom to make choices without as much city government involvement.”

A flow of real-time data within the Azure environment will also make it easier for the city to deliver services to those in need. “People may not be aware that they qualify for certain benefits because they can’t or don’t fill out the needed forms to apply,” says Velthuizen. “Data can show us who qualifies and allow us to make benefits more accessible to more people. For example, if you qualify for a free bus card, we are not going to ask you to fill out a form—we will just send you the card.”

With Azure, the City of Utrecht has a secure, flexible digital foundation on which to build smart city services. “Our job now is to educate our teams on the possibilities,” says Visser. “Over the next few years, we will be thinking about problems in the city and how to use Azure to solve those issues and reap the benefits of real-time data.”

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