DCN April 2016 | Page 47

projects & agreements NATO selects Italtel for portable data centre project HITACHI DATA SYSTEMS ENABLES RESEARCH INNOVATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF STRATHCLYDE Italtel has been awarded an international tender by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to build two transportable data centres. More than 250 companies belonging to the 28 member countries of the Alliance were notified about the tender for the project – the demand for which was generated by the Italian Army. The acquisition was delegated by TELEDIFE (the Italian Defence Telecommunication Procurement Directorate) to the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA), which developed the technical specification due to its knowledge and previous experience of current systems in place. The data centres will be deployed at the NATO Rapid Deployable Corps Italy (NRDC – ITA), in Solbiate Olona, to align its Communication and Information System (CIS) infrastructure with the requirements of its recently awarded role of landheavy Joint Task Force (JTF) Headquarters, which involves leading NATO joint operations within NATO Areas of Responsibility, often performed out of the national borders. The data centres provided by this project are destined to be used by NRDC – ITA in various overseas locations where allied forces are deployed. Based in Glasgow, the University of Strathclyde is one of the UK’s top 20 research intensive universities, with more than 22,000 students. Strathclyde is a leading international technological university, committed to providing innovative research of true societal value to tackle the major challenges of the 21st century. But the university had concerns about its ageing IT infrastructure that was nearing the end of its useful life. Many researchers and academic departments were also reaching the upper limit of the storage capacity assigned to them by the IT team. Hitachi Data Systems worked with partner Capita to provide an enterprise class solution covering NAS, SAN and back up based on Hitachi Unified Storage VM with accelerated flash, designed to provide a single platform for all data types. The university maintains an established strategic technology partnership with Capita, focused on delivering technology enhancements for the benefit of student, staff and partners. With the latest implementation, Hitachi Data Systems was able to provide a guarantee of 100 per cent data availability to give the university the non-disruptive, reliable service required to enable students to work securely 24/7. IT INFRASTRUCTURE SOFTWARE & SERVICES www.rittal.co.uk