Green Data Cabinets Feature Editorial

The Ashford Borough Council Local Authority in the U.K. has virtualized its voice infrastructure with the help of Mitel’s (News - Alert) smart unified communications solutions and applications for organizations of all sizes.

Mitel and VMware resolved voice latency challenges to offer real-time voice performance in a virtualized environment. Virtual Mitel Communications Director “Virtual MCD” is the first real-time voice application designed for the VMware Sphere 4 platform.

According to Rob Neil, head of ICT & Customer Services at Ashford Borough Council, at present, the Ashford Borough Council is the only Council in the U.K. to virtualize its voice infrastructure.

Neil also said the shifting of the data center to VMware vSphere has enabled the Council to consolidate 60 servers into three, resulting in cost-savings and improved maintenance time.

Due to the reduction in server count, the Council has been able to save 40-45 percent on their electrical bill and the reduction in physical server count produces energy savings across the data center.

In addition, Neil said that getting the old systems back up after a disaster would usually take five or six days. VMware vSphere host image backups enable the Council to bring the whole system back to full operation in about 20 minutes.

Ashford Borough Council said it is also planning to run more Mitel applications on the virtual network in the near future. Blending the Virtual MCD solution with VMware vSphere in the datacenter is a critical part of Ashford Borough Council’s strategy to meet the future with reliable and innovative services for the public.