Cisco Announces Gloucestershire Constabulary as 500th Unified Computing System Customer in Europe

Police Force Selects Cisco's Next-Generation Data Centre Platform to Raise Efficiency and Lower Costs

BEDFONT, UK - 9 February 2011 - Cisco announced at Cisco Live in London last week that Gloucestershire Constabulary, a police force covering six districts across southwest England, has become the 500th customer of the Cisco Unified Computing System^TM in Europe. This implementation represents the latest milestone in the rapid adoption of Cisco's next-generation data centre platform.

Key highlights:

• The Cisco Unified Computing System allows organisations to adapt to rapidly changing business conditions by significantly increasing the ability of information technology professionals to scale service delivery while reducing total cost of ownership through a more efficient use of data centre resources.
• Like many other public sector organisations, the Gloucestershire Constabulary is currently facing tight budget constraints. In order to increase efficiency and reduce costs, the organisation is undergoing a restructuring process. An emphasis on efficiency was a key driver behind the decision to adopt a cloud approach, which will enable higher levels of automation and integration across all of the constabulary's operations.
• The Gloucestershire Constabulary chose the Cisco Unified Computing System, which will be deployed by Cisco Gold Certified Partner Computacenter, following a competitive tender process. The deployment will see the Cisco solution installed in the Gloucestershire Constabulary's primary data centre at Quedgeley and linked with a disaster recovery centre at Cheltenham. The implementation includes two server chassis, eight Cisco B200 blade servers and four Cisco UCS 6120XP 20-Port Fabric Interconnects. The implementation will also include Cisco UCS Startup Accelerator Services: a package of consultancy, training and knowledge-transfer support services.
• Previously, the constabulary ran a traditional data centre, with approximately 200 physical servers hosting mission-critical 'command and control centre' systems, as well as business-critical applications such as Microsoft Server and Hyper V applications. This approach, which meant that the IT team was running specific services and operating systems on dedicated servers rather than side-by-side on virtual machines, was difficult to manage and led to frequent hardware purchases and inevitable server sprawl. This environment was also expensive in terms of space, cooling and power.
• The Cisco Unified Computing System will enable the Gloucestershire Constabulary to significantly reduce costs by consolidating the number of servers required from 200 physical servers to two chassis as well as reducing the organisation's power requirements through the implantation of smart meter technology. Finally, the Cisco Unified Computing System will allow the constabulary to reduce file server requirements by centralising storage and domain access to a small number of sites.

Supporting quotes:

• Wendy Mars, European director for Data Centres & Virtualisation, Cisco:

"Since the launch of the Cisco Unified Computing System, Cisco has worked closely with its partners to tackle our customers' toughest data centre challenges. We are delighted to have signed Gloucestershire Constabulary as the 500th Cisco Unified Computing System customer in Europe. To reach this milestone so quickly is a fantastic testament to the platform and the value that our customers are realising from this fresh approach to streamline their data centre operations while increasing efficiency and scalability."

• Mike Crompton, technical services manager, Gloucestershire Constabulary:

"The Gloucestershire Constabulary is currently undergoing a significant restructuring process. As part of this process, we saw a real opportunity to improve the efficiency of our IT infrastructure and were looking beyond legacy approaches for a next-generation data centre platform. The Cisco Unified Computing System will allow us to increase our server utilisation and reduce our energy, space and hardware costs while improving our ability to deliver the mission-critical services that the organisation needs in order to serve the public."

• Ade Foxall, Director of UCS, Computacenter:

"As organisations are coming under greater pressure to streamline their IT operations, particularly with regard to the data centre, we are seeing a growing demand for Cisco Unified Computing System, and the kind of tangible business benefits that it uniquely delivers. As a Cisco UCS Authorized Technology Provider Partner, Computacenter looks forward to working with Gloucestershire Constabulary to achieve their datacentre optimisation objectives."

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