The Isle of Man Government has completed the migration of its internal datacentre from Government Offices in central Douglas to Manx Telecom's new Greenhill Datacentre.
The move saw some 25 racks of IT equipment that housed many of Government's critical systems relocated without any major disruption and follows a significant amount of planning.
The benefits from the move are two-fold. Firstly, as part of a broader relocation of assets in conjunction with Treasury's Strategic Asset Management Unit and the Department of Infrastructure, it will release valuable office space in the centre of Douglas which in turn will realise savings from reducing the amount of office accommodation that Government rents.
Secondly and equally important is the need to have critical systems hosted in a secure high availability environment. The migration is part of a continued journey to improve the underlying resilience in Government's increasing information systems estate.
The contract was awarded to Manx Telecom following an open procurement exercise undertaken in 2014.
Director of Government Technology Services, Mark Lewin said:
'One of the two critical datacentres had been externally hosted for many years and although our internal datacentre had operated well, it was approaching the end of its current economic life. The cost of providing this type of specialised environment is significant and we have an excellent selection of dedicated datacentres on the Island. Consequently it made perfect sense in keeping with looking at alternative means of service delivery to consider sourcing this function from the private sector.'
'We developed out the business case and could see that as well as improving the hosting environment and avoiding capital costs for a refresh of the internal datacentre, it made financial sense on an ongoing basis by allowing us to release the space it occupied for staff accommodation and move staff in from rented accommodation elsewhere.'
Mr Lewin added:
'The process started in 2014 and the contract was awarded to Manx Telecom following an open procurement exercise. This migration marks the completion of many months of planning and is a testament to the professionalism and teamwork shown by a great number of staff and a range of suppliers including Manx Telecom, ServiceTech, Island Express, Unisys and EMC.'
The move follows the successful relocation of a third datacentre to Netcetera in December 2014 which was awarded as part of the same procurement exercise.
