Norfolk County Council Children’s Services works with 450 schools across Norfolk, but each used a different IT system, meaning their estate was expensive and difficult to manage.
BT Cloud Compute’s cloud-based data centre infrastructure allowed Children’s Services to manage the estate from one single database for a faster, more efficient and secure solution.
“Only having to input data once rather than up to five times, we’ve calculated the savings could be as much as £2 million to £4 million.” Paul Fisher, Assistant Director.
The challenge
The solution
With BT Cloud Compute we saw no start-up costs, and as far as we were concerned that gave us the better financial return.
By eliminating the need for much of the physical hardware in schools and physical data centres, Cloud Compute solution would help Norfolk County Council manage its ICT infrastructure at a much lower cost by moving applications, storage, and security into the cloud.
This would not only lower accommodation requirements, but also cut power requirements and reduce carbon emissions. BT estimates Cloud Compute offers total cost of ownership savings of up to 40% compared with traditional approaches.
A further advantage of Cloud Compute was speed of deployment.
Mike Pickett, manager of Digital Infrastructure, ICT Solutions, at Norfolk County Council says: “If we need new capacity, it can actually be delivered within a few hours.”
The result
The implementation and decommissioning of educational applications can now be achieved via the self-service portal with just a few clicks. Besides releasing expensive accommodation, there are other benefits in terms of being a more child-centred organisation.
Overall productivity in Children’s Services is expected to improve as centralisation and simplification feed through.
“The interoperability infrastructure is absolutely critical in terms of delivering efficiency savings across the estate,” says Mike Pickett.
Across the estate of 450 schools, only having to input data once rather than up to five times, we’ve calculated the savings could be as much as £2 million to £4 million.
Most importantly for Paul Fisher: “With BT Cloud Compute we saw no start-up costs, and as far as we were concerned that gave us the better financial return.”
And all of this is achieved without compromising data security. The council has a very clear security policy to which BT and Children’s Services business processes and personnel conform.
Mike Pickett says: “We know at a technical level that the cloud-based data centre itself is incredibly secure.”
The BT Cloud Compute solution is enabling Children’s Services to progressively move towards a single database supporting multiple applications.
Paul Fisher concludes: “Not only do we see reductions in our carbon output, but also schools are using less space.”
About
- Company
Children’s Services department for Norfolk County Council
- Industry
Education
- Location
Norfolk
