HMRC moves file and printer servers to the cloud to reduce lost office hours

Cetralised storage solution also enables HMRC to cut costs and reduce risk of data loss

HM Revenue & Customs' (HMRC) move to the cloud has gathered pace following its decision to transfer its print and file servers to a centralised storage solution provided by Skyscape.

The move is partly driven by the need to reduce overheads, as under the government's spending review the HMRC has to cut its running costs by five per cent cut.

"We've got a lot of physical offices in the UK and each one of those has a print or file server, providing local print services. A lot of the time printers start acquiring other services as well - like being used for distribution purposes and file sharing. The file and printer servers were last refreshed in 2006 and they are now coming to the end of life, and the back-ups are becoming more problematic as the hardware fails," Andrew Bull, director of delivery and operations in information services at HMRC, said at the Cloud World Forum held in London Olympia today.

The easy option, Bull said, would have been to buy new servers and "dump them down there", but the department needed a longer-term solution that would be cost effective.

Another issue that HMRC had to contend with was the amount of office hours lost due to file and printer server failures.

"We could see [the amount of failures] going up, even in proportion to other areas such as network connectivity," Bull said.

What came as a surprise to HMRC was its assessment on power consumption as part of its strategy to become more green in its use of IT.

"One surprise was the amount of power consumed in local communications rooms, largely because of file and print servers. The tape drives overheating meant that we needed air conditioning, which is inefficient and costs a lot to run," he said.

HMRC moves file and printer servers to the cloud to reduce lost office hours

Cetralised storage solution also enables HMRC to cut costs and reduce risk of data loss

HMRC is moving the servers to a centralised storage solution. It has put in a local infrastructure server but it is no longer mission critical, as if it fails, HMRC can still access the printers as it is connected directly to the PSN.

The benefits for HMRC, according to Bull, are major capital expenditure savings, the reduction in energy consumption alone would amount to £750,000 per annum (based on last year's fuel prices).

Another benefit is that there is no longer a need to transport back-up tapes offsite, enabling the department to save costs on a secure courier service and eliminating the risk of tape loss, Bull said.

But Bull explained the move did come with challenges, such as issues with Microsoft's common internet file system (CIFS) protocol, which "wasn't the most friendly for Wide Area Networks (WAN)", meaning that HMRC had to use accelerators.

Another challenge was that HMRC was transitioning to the Public Services Network (PSN) at the same time.

"We had issues with the ability to deploy and interpretation of standards, most of which are solved now - when you're early adopters, you come across these things," Bull said.

There were also concerns around the move to the cloud which have eased, and a lack of understanding of the PSN and the G-Cloud framework.

But since the switch for the servers, the results have been positive, said Bull.

"In the first half of 2013 we had 120 per cent of the lost office hours we had in 2010/11 but in the second half [since moving to the cloud], we have reduced this to 44 per cent of the 2010 lost hours," he stated.