Middlesex University aims to slash 40% off its energy use as part of a complete overhaul of its IT infrastructure and disaster recovery service from IBM.
Under terms of the five-year, multi-million deal, IBM will provide a hosted virtualised server and storage environment and emergency back-up. Virtualisation will enable the university to cut the number of machines it needs in its primary data centre from 250 to 25, reducing its electricity usage by 40% and space used by 600 square feet in the process. Further reductions on power and space in its campus machine rooms will all help the university meet government targets for energy saving.
Scalability was a key issue for the university, as it plans shortly to open a campus in Mauritius to match its existing offshore campus in Dubai.
The improved infrastructure will have other side benefits such as lowering operating costs and better collaboration tools. Storage capacity will be increased by 45% to 70 terabytes as server and storage consolidation and virtualisation. Having IBM on board also frees up the internal IT team to focus on strategic internal projects for the university.
By minimising the day-to-day support and maintenance our IT team provides, we can refocus our time on strategic initiatives and new technologies. As a result of this agreement, teaching staff and students will also experience less disruption as routine maintenance work can increasingly be conducted out of hours, said Paula Vickers, pro vice-chancellor and director of computing and communication systems service at Middlesex.
