Manchester-based VAR ANS Group has helped a local council save more than £70,000 and polish its green credentials after completing a data consolidation project.

Rossendale Borough Council, which serves some 60,000 citizens, has been able to reduce its server numbers from 42 to just three as a result of the project, after being tasked with achieving the best return on investment from its IT systems.

Due to an increase in the amount of data stored on its systems, the number of servers it was using was causing management and environmental issues.

Andrew Buckle, head of customer services and ICT at Rossendale Council, said: “Using NetApp and VMware technology, we have achieved significant energy savings, reducing our datacentre space requirement by 50 per cent.

“The reduction of our datacentre storage has also enabled us to significantly improve the council’s energy efficiency, saving enormous volumes of electricity and heat that the numerous servers created.“

Paul Sweeney, managing director of ANS Group, said: “At present, local councils are under enormous pressure to save costs wherever possible, a scenario likely to be the case for some time to come.

"By consolidating IT systems and looking into areas where savings can be made, councils can significantly improve the return on investment from IT infrastructure, reinvesting the savings back into taxpayers' pockets and helping to improve the local community.”

Buckle added: “For the benefit of the Borough, we now boast a truly versatile, robust server and storage virtualised environment which has been advised on and implemented by ANS Group.”