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The City of Edinburgh Council: Server virtualisation project enables increased business agility and assured business continuity
Executive summary
In 2001 the City of Edinburgh Council entered into a 10-year IT outsourcing partnership with BT. Under the £100 million contract, BT has taken full responsibility for the day-to-day operation and evolution of the Council’s networked IT infrastructure. BT inherited a diverse array of equipment and operating systems, running a wide variety of applications. By 2005 it had became apparent that the Council’s server infrastructure was in need of substantial overhaul.
Servers were not centrally hosted but distributed throughout the Council. Support costs were escalating and concern was growing about the longevity and resilience of the estate. BT decided that in order to safeguard service it needed to implement greater control and consolidate the server estate into a centralised data centre environment. A server virtualisation approach was adopted: enabling greater utilisation of server resources, lower support costs and increased resilience by reducing potential points of failure.
The programme extended over a 14-month period during which all 19 selected applications had been successfully migrated into a hosted virtual server environment, with zero unscheduled downtime. Applications now run much more quickly, are more reliable, and are available at all times. The virtualisation project has also enhanced resilience and assured business continuity. The City of Edinburgh Council reaffirmed its confidence in BT by extending the outsourcing partnership until 2016, and a second phase of the virtualisation project is now being planned.
“The whole project was managed very smoothly by BT and most users of our applications have been completely unaware of the transition. But what all of our people have noticed is that applications now run much more quickly, are much more reliable, and are available at all times.”
Andrew Unsworth, Head of IT, The City of Edinburgh Council