NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS)
THE CHALLENGE
In mid-2023, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) began the process of moving away from their internally managed Azure hosting environment. As part of a broader departmental restructure, they needed to find a new custodian for their Sitecore-based web platform—one capable of delivering ongoing stability, high performance, and support through government procurement models.
PING was selected based on a combination of technical expertise, cost-effectiveness, and operational fit. The team brought over a decade of Sitecore experience, deep knowledge of Azure infrastructure, and a unique position in the market: being able to offer both implementation and managed services at a competitive price point.
The core project involved provisioning a new Azure tenancy, migrating both the NPWS website and its supporting infrastructure, and creating a hosting model that could adapt to ongoing change—including a major in-house Sitecore upgrade by the NPWS development team. The project had to account for scale, budget controls, and the reality of overlapping systems and shifting ownership across departments.
THE SOLUTION
PING provisioned a new Azure environment and moved the NPWS Sitecore platform into its own isolated tenancy. The first release to go live was the “Digital Backpack”—a logged-in user area used for bookings, trip intentions, park alerts and pass management. This was followed by the main NPWS website a few months later.
The NPWS internal team led the Sitecore version upgrade independently. During this period, PING ensured infrastructure remained cost-efficient through just-in-time provisioning aligned with project needs.
Performance optimisation was a key focus. We tuned the infrastructure to offload as much traffic as possible from Sitecore—routing 90% of requests (e.g. images, JS, CSS) through Azure-based static services. This reduced compute costs and improved site speed.
We also advised NPWS on tuning Sitecore itself, helping them identify caching strategies and runtime bottlenecks. Our performance guidance helped NPWS achieve load times and Lighthouse scores that exceeded expectations—without relying on CDN caching for HTML delivery.
THE RESULTS
The new NPWS platform went live in January 2025. Since then:
- The site has maintained 100% uptime
- Hosting support has received just one ticket
- Lighthouse performance scores outperform major benchmarks
- Sitecore runs efficiently on minimal infrastructure
Services Provided
- Sitecore & Azure Cloud Hosting
- Managed Services
- Cloud Infrastructure & DevOps
- Consulting & Advisory
- Experience Optimisation
- Sitecore Support & Performance Tuning