Isle of Man heads to hybrid cloud

The Isle of Man Government has moved its entire infrastructure to the cloud as part of its new IT strategy.

More than 1,000 critical applications can now be accessed remotely, including email, accounting and CRM.

It has chosen to adopt a hybrid model, using a number of products from EMC's portfolio to make the transition become a reality.

The private aspect of the cloud is based on EMC's Unified Storage hardware with solid state flash drives, increasing the speed and capacity of its datacentres.

EMC's VPLEX virtual storage platform has been put on top of the hardware, enabling data to be shared across several different sites. Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) technology also comes into play to ensure data is stored in the right place, depending on the need for availability.

EMC claimed by using its technology, the Isle of Man's Government Information Systems Division had cut operating costs by 15 per cent. But another driver was the flexibility cloud computing offers.

Public services on the Isle of Man tend to tick along quietly as there is only a population of just over 80,000. However, it is known for large scale special events, such as the annual TT motorcycle race, and the island's infrastructure needs to be able to scale with this increased load.

Peter Clarke, chief technology officer for the Isle of Man Government, was pleased to be ahead of the game compared to many public sector organisations.

"The Isle of Man Government is an early adopter of new technologies, and our analysis indicated that VPLEX would reduce operating costs by 15 per cent," he said.

"We wrote our business plan around this. It was a compelling argument. Having recognised that VPLEX could further increase service levels while reducing IT costs, we made the decision to purchase and we are delighted to have realised the projected benefits, and more."