Council cuts costs with virtualisation

Wandworth has signed a five year deal with Unisys

Wandsworth Council is revamping its IT infrastructure and adopting a virtualised model to deliver more efficient and flexible services to citizens.

In a five-year deal with vendor Unisys, the council plans to create an infrastructure that will reduce complexity, operational costs and its carbon footprint.

David Walker, Wandsworth’s head of IT services, says changing how the council manages and deploys systems will allow services to be provided faster.

‘We will be more flexible in service provision to enable a joint effort between IT and the business,’ he said.

‘Our server estate has been built up over the years based on one server per application, which is expensive to maintain and has high administrative and software costs.

‘We are keen to scale up and not scale out by consolidating 230 servers. We will focus on cost cutting and improving disaster recovery capabilities and performance,’ he said.

Wandsworth’s server, desktop and storage estate is to be consolidated and its green credentials will be improved by moving to thin clients, which should generate power and heat savings.

The council has been considering a virtualised environment for the past two and a half years.

‘When we first explored virtualisation, Unisys said it was not mature enough, but a year ago we were advised to go for it.’

‘A virtualised environment will enable us to explore open-source software as it can be more easily tested,’ he said.