Scotland's third largest local authority is simplifying its storage systems to improve the way it handles data.

Fife Council chose IT services group GlassHouse Technologies to implement a system that would store and protect its data more efficiently and improve access.

The council had been holding large amounts of dispersed data in five centres, which were maintained under different policies and procedures, and where access and availability varied.

Staff were having difficulty accessing information, which would be even hearder to recover if a system failed. Fife now has a tiered storage strategy and data is split across two sites, to acccomodate system failure.

Centralised data management and disaster protection were key priorities, said Roddy Cameron, technical consultant at Fife Council.

“We acknowledged that we needed a coherent long term storage strategy for the data the council holds," he said.

"We needed the data to be consolidated to enable centralised management and guaranteed backup and protection against disaster, at the same time having a consistently high level of access."