Virtustream re-routes storage for British Transport Police

VAR overhauls police body's storage infrastructure

VAR Virtustream has completed its overhaul of the British Transport Police's (BTP) storage infrastructure using Dell-Compellent technology.

The project saw BTP replace its physical servers with virtual ones using a system based on Dell-Compellent's Fluid Data product and VMware's virtualisation software.

The new system will provide staff with faster access to the data generated by the force's crime reporting and analysis applications, which are used across 148 sites in England, Scotland and Wales.

This data will now be stored on a single Dell-Compellent SAN device in London, which will be backed up on a secondary device in Birmingham for business continuity purposes.

The BTP claims the efficiency savings garnered by the project mean the force should see a return on its investment within nine months.

Troy West, vice president and general manager of public sector at Dell, EMEA, said: "By selecting a Dell-Compellent storage system, BTP has admirably used public tax funds to purchase technology with a return on investment of less than one year.

"BTP has also replicated its data from 148 sites without any additional overhead or costs beyond the initial investment," he added.

Philip Clifton, assistant technology manager for infrastructure at BTP, added: "We chose to put [Dell-Compellent] at the core of everything we are doing because we knew we could not only rely on Dell, our passengers could, too."