Hyperconverged infrastructure to support citizen-centric digital service delivery

Challenge

Replacing critical infrastructure with a future-proofed, efficient solution

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council (DLRCC) delivers public services to over 234,000 residents and visitors, spanning 17km of the Irish coastline.

The council is committed to a digital first approach: it needed modern infrastructure to deliver seamless and innovative citizen services now and into the future. It also needed to meet data governance, accessibility and sustainability goals, and to achieve cost savings and better value from IT investment.

The existing legacy solution was nearing the end of its support life and capacity. DLRCC sought a replacement that would perform optimally, use less energy, reduce operational overheads and mitigate the latest cyber threats.

DLRCC set out requirements for a hybrid cloud infrastructure solution encompassing on-premise, hyperconverged infrastructure, and integrated public/private cloud services. The council wanted new server, computer and storage infrastructure with high application availability, data loss prevention, efficient disaster recovery and business continuity managed services. The new services should be seamlessly deployed on-premise or in the cloud.

Solutions

Streamlined, best-of-breed HCI with personalised deployment & support

ProCloud’s solution stood out because of our team’s proven reputation for committed and personal service delivery. This gave DLRCC confidence in our capability to design, commission and support the solution. Combining this with the superiority of our proposed HPE SimpliVity infrastructure technology, ProCloud won the tender.

Our solution was built on HPE SimpliVity hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI). Comprehensive on-premise capabilities included computing, storage, network, backup, and high availability. We integrated the on-premise infrastructure with Microsoft Azure Public Cloud to ensure robust data protection and business continuity. We facilitated skills transfer and training so DLRCC’s team could operate the new environment effectively, giving them long-term self-sufficiency.

The solution consolidated the entire stack of physical server and storage infrastructure to reduce complexity and overheads, with simple management, two-node high availability, built-in data protection, and hyper data efficiency across all edge sites and data centres.

The solution consolidated the entire stack of physical server and storage infrastructure to reduce complexity and overheads, with simple management, two-node high availability, built-in data protection, and hyper data efficiency across all edge sites and data centres.

Results

Sustainable, future-proof hyperconverged infrastructure for superb digital service delivery

The ProCloud-managed HCI solution turbocharges DLRCC’s operations and digital transformation journey. We’ve redefined data collection and data lifecycle management through agile storage capabilities. With more computing power, stakeholders can visualise proposals through augmented technologies. Secure protocols and frequent backups accelerate the transition to the e-Chamber.

With round-the-clock support, a close relationship and ongoing advice from trusted friends at ProCloud, the DLRCC IT team has an infrastructure solution that makes day-to-day operation easy and delivers great service to stakeholders.

The DLRCC partnership with ProCloud and HPE shows the transformative potential of strategic IT investment. The digital-first approach equips the council to meet the evolving needs of constituents in sustainable, resilient communities and supports a service delivery system that proactively responds to citizens’ needs. DLRCC is investing cost savings in Digital Strategy Plan initiatives to increase accessibility and digital inclusion, such as free Wi-Fi access points throughout the county.

Key benefits of the new infrastructure include:

• HPE SimpliVity reduces the total cost of ownership by 45%.
• Its compact, energy-efficient design creates 400% annual energy savings 
• ProCloud's operating support model provides round-the-clock support, so council staff can focus on innovation and service delivery
• The reliability of the solution allows DLRCC to manage 65% more customer queries through the Civic Hub compared to the previous year
• The HCI infrastructure supports new digital services such as webcasting, electronic voting and teleconferencing