Loughborough University Sports Hybrid Cloud with Logicalis

SLOUGH, England, March 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Loughborough University is to deploy Logicalis' Cooperative Cloud to cost-effectively meet the long-term capacity demands of its growing research, teaching and enterprise services.  As part of a strategic IT partnership, Logicalis will design and build an on-site, bespoke private cloud fully integrated with an off-site, cooperative hosted cloud. This single, scalable architecture will provide unlimited scope for future capacity provisioning and is set to save the University over 640 metric tonnes of CO2 per annum and significant cost-savings.

Dr Phil Richards, Director of IT at Loughborough University, comments, "Our data centre was built and designed 40 years ago. It has served us well, but is showing its age through a poor PUE (Power Utilisation Efficiency) rating and limited capacity. We were open to innovation from the IT sector to bring us the most cost-effective and creative ways to build a more holistic and scalable IT architecture that would grow with us for the long-term.

"Precise capacity planning more than a couple of years in advance is nigh-on impossible in our sector. While other education establishments are investing millions in new data centre builds to increase capacity and efficiency, it became clear during the tender process that a cloud model would provide the most strategic option for Loughborough both now, and into the future."

According to Richards, in assessing a range of private and hybrid cloud services, Logicalis stood out for its compelling credentials in developing public sector services coupled with a uniquely tangible cloud; "I was able to visit the data centre and see the Logicalis Cooperative Cloud in action. No other provider was able to make the cloud real in this way, which was an important ingredient for us to assess the service capability and risk to our business. Logicalis' connection to JANET was also a key differentiator - it was clear they had made significant commercial investment into their cloud infrastructure so we wouldn't have to."

Loughborough's on-site cloud is built on enterprise class technology from Cisco, NetApp and CA to create a self-contained, highly virtualised and extremely compact environment. This provides enough compute, storage and network capacity to meet immediate local demand, while long-term future capacity, on-demand burst capacity and disaster recovery capability is provided by the Logicalis Hosted Cloud.

Simon Daykin, CTO of Logicalis UK, explains, "We have been able to leverage the innovation of our private cloud design and hosted cloud services to transform the future of server and storage provisioning at the University. The Logicalis Virtual Container technology allows Loughborough to move real IT services back and forth between on-site dedicated and off-site shared hosted clouds rapidly, reliably and without application or infrastructure changes.  

"For Loughborough, cloud was about more than simply consolidating existing servers through virtualisation; it was about solving real business issues.  They had the foresight to use cloud to tackle a problem that would historically have required significant physical data centre reconstruction. Working collaboratively, we have built a new IT consumption model for Higher Education. One that I am confident will be adopted widely as the sector looks to replace aging data centres, use cloud for on-demand capacity for seasonal burst, or as a service disaster recovery."

The strategic partnership also includes a Unified Communications & Collaboration suite deployed for 3,000 University staff and 1,600 Business & Community Engagement tenants across the campus. In addition, the deployment of a new LAN and WAN will create a secure, robust and highly available IT infrastructure, which is paramount as Loughborough prepares for its duties as The Official Preparation Camp Headquarters for Team GB prior to the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Finally, the partnership will see Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) implemented across University's corporate desktops. Initially rolled out amongst administrative and clerical users to reduce processing power and centralise support, Loughborough plans to extend the VDI project to the virtual learning environment in the future. Here, Loughborough University and Logicalis are exploring the possibilities for virtual application delivery that will enable students to access learning tools outside of the computer room - anytime, anyplace, anywhere.

Tom Kelly, MD of Logicalis UK, concludes, "At a time when efficiency in the education sector is vital, the strategic nature of our partnership with Loughborough sees us fully committed to providing ongoing innovation that will continue to deliver significant environmental and economic savings."

About Logicalis

Logicalis is an international provider of integrated information and communications technology (ICT) solutions and services founded on a superior breadth of knowledge and expertise in communications & collaboration; data centre; and professional and managed services. For more information, visit www.uk.logicalis.com.

SOURCE Logicalis UK