Council benefits from Virtualization using VMWare

http://www.publictechnology.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=16220

Bracknell Forest Borough Council, which provides support services to over 115,000 residents in Central Berkshire, Southern England, has used VMware’s virtualization and management platform, VMware Infrastructure 3, to drive down operating costs, be more flexible, improve business continuity and disaster recovery, and accelerate the delivery of new applications and services to the public.

Among the new services rolled out on VMware Infrastructure are an Integrated Children Services (ICS) system, which is used in the delivery of cutting edge social services to children at risk and in care, and Pericles, a government-sector Revenues and Benefits application, which has allowed the council to streamline its council tax and benefits application and payments processes.

Following an audit of the Council’s infrastructure, which showed that its server farm was running at only around 10 percent of capacity, the management team saw an opportunity to streamline its operations and boost utilization using virtualization. The IT department built a business case for virtualization as part of the Council’s ‘Invest to Save’ initiative, which funds projects that deliver savings in the longer term. Working with technology partner Sol-Tec and Intercept-IT, Bracknell Forest began deploying VMware Infrastructure 3 in June 2007.

“VMware has had a tremendous effect on our IT infrastructure and has drastically improved our ability to deliver applications to the organization much more quickly,” said Richard Dawson, IT Services Manager, Bracknell Forest Borough Council. “On cost savings alone, the benefits are huge – we will save around £75,000 a year on our annual server hardware refresh, while our power and cooling costs have been reduced by around 20%.”

Very cool, it’s always great to see how people are benefiting from the technology, as well as the technologies they have used to achieve this, interestingly the article mentions the power and management benefits. That being able to deploy systems in shorter timescales, allowing IT to be more responsive to the end user needs, very cool. Do check it out.