City University London has adopted Veeam’s Availability Suite v8 to boost 24/7 availability of data and services to students, staff and administrators on campus.
The institution said the partnership, which also includes hosting and cloud services provider Phoenix IT, also seeks to improve IT efficiencies and reduce backup and recovery costs by more than 30%.
The university said that in total, 18,000 students will benefit from the three-year deal which will see Veeam’s Availability Suite Enterprise Plus edition provide City students with a secure on and off-campus access to their data.
The Enterprise Plus offering provides recovery times and point objectives (RTPO) of less than 15 minutes for applications and data, according to Veeam.
City will also benefit from the Enterprise Plus self-service feature, which enables the helpdesk to restore guest files, mailbox items and databases back to the main server with a single click through web user interface.
Eric McIntosh, deputy CTO of City University London said: "Education institutions are facing many constant and varying challenges. One of the most pertinent is that both students and staff are demanding a more effective IT infrastructure to meet their needs. "
Olivier Robinne, VP EMEA of Veeam Software, also commented: "It is no longer enough for higher education institutions to simply ‘have’ learning materials – however good they are – as they must be constantly available to students at anytime, anywhere.
"We collectively understood the challenges involved and were able to define a clear journey for the expansion of City’s IT infrastructure with a set of solutions that achieved their needs of being an Always-On Business, while improving the IT experience of its students. "
Scott Auld, higher education manager of Phoenix, said: "Technology is changing the way students learn and, as a result, educational institutions are embracing the need to improve their IT services to meet both current demands and attract future students.
"With our collaborative partnership with Veeam, we provided a solution to enhance City’s IT infrastructure. The solution will enable constant availability of data and services, while improving IT efficiencies and operational costs, providing a much better staff and student experience."
