Esteem lightens cash-strapped council's IT costs

VAR helps Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council save £500,000 over the next five years

Esteem has helped a UK council save £500,000 over the next five years by installing a virtualised and managed IT infrastructure.

Put under pressure by the central government spending review, Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council had to reduce the cost of its services without affecting quality of service.

Following a stringent tender process, Esteem won the contract to improve the council's existing IT infrastructure. Under the deal, Esteem will use Oracle’s Solaris Zones and a managed service for the day-to-day management of the Oracle infrastructure. It also upgraded the council’s disaster recovery infrastructure.

Sam Maiden, technical solutions manager at Knowsley, said: “The public spending review puts tremendous pressure on public sector organisations to consistently make savings, year on year.

“With the advice from Esteem, we realised we could make significant cuts and increase efficiencies with a virtualised infrastructure and a managed service which would increase our productivity, enabling us to provide a better service to the public.

Maiden added: “The migration process was a seamless and painless experience. When you do not get a pat on the back for a migration because no one knows it has happened, that is the best result you could ask for.”