Datacenter Dynamics: 20-21 November 2013

Tomorrow I'm heading to London to the Datacentre Dynamics Conference and Expo at EXCEL.

I'll be presenting a case study - The University of St Andrews Data Center Consolidation and Virtualisation Project. 

My presentation will cover:

• some background about the University of St Andrews (located in a small fishing village in NE Fife!);
• the challenges I inherited back in 2010;
• how we've delivered our transformation agenda and ICT vision;
• BYOD ecosystem;
• our data centre build project
• and what we've achieved and how we measure success

The agenda for the day is packed - and look forward to hearing from a wide variety of industry experts. 

http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/conferences/2013/london-2013?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=London%20EB%20Deadline%202013

Gartner Data Centre Summit 2013

I am delighted to be delivering an end user case study entitled "Transforming IT at the 600 Year Old University of St Andrews" at the 2013 Gartner Data Centre Summit in London on November 26th this year.

In this session I will look at our journey over the last three years and how our data centre has played a key part in underpinning the transformation. I will also look at how both server and network virtualisation has improved the resilience, efficiency and availability of core systems and services.

Full details of the event can be found here  http://www.gartner.com/technology/summits/emea/data-center/

Janet News Issue 22 - featuring IT Services at the University of St Andrews

https://www.ja.net/sites/default/files/news/Janet%20News%2022%20lo%20res.pdf
(see pages 16-19)

 
 
 
 

Please support Action for Children - sponsor me!

Did you know that each year in the UK:

§  100,000 young people are homeless

§  1 in 3 young people will attempt to take their own life

§  1 in 7 young people will be sexually abused

On Friday night (4^th October) I’m taking part in Byte Night to raise much needed funds for Action for Children - a charity who supports and speaks out for the UK’s most vulnerable and neglected children and young people.  Action for Children helps to prevent youth homelessness through early intervention by ensuring that young people across the UK are given the support they need before it's too late.
  

On 4^th October I’ll be ‘sleeping rough’  to raise awareness and funds for this great cause. 

Byte Night is the IT industry's annual sleep out in support of Action for Children. Each year hundreds of individuals and teams (including a team from ITS) from across the technology and business community spend a night exposed to the elements in a bid to raise sponsorship and awareness of Action for Children's work to help prevent youth homelessness.

So, the purpose of my blog is to ask you to sponsor me - PLEASE!    Overall, the events across the country hope to raise £1m.  

To sponsor me, please go to our fundraising page: 
http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/StAndrewsITS

To find out more about Byte Night and the work of Action for Children, please go to:
http://www.bytenight.org.uk/

http://www.actionforchildren.org.uk/

Many thanks in advance for your support

 

Virtualisation and Consolidation

One of the larger projects my team and I are involved in at present is one to consolidate the University's IT estate. Like any large organisation the dependency on IT has never been greater and around the clock availability of key systems is now an expectation (but not always a reality - see my blog post re. Outages!). With many buildings and a wide range of servers our aim is to consolidate as much as possible and reduce the distribution of servers and storage serving users across the campus.
Being a University we will always have an elements of distributed equipment however where it makes economic sense to do so we will aim to provide the service centrally. Good examples of this are systems such as email, authentication, storage, network services, telephony, etc.

Not only are we reducing energy consumption but we are also reducing our carbon output. I was recently interviewed by Graeme Burton of Computing and the article was published in this weeks Computing and can be found at http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/feature/2291483/driving-down-costs-and-carbon-emissions-at-the-university-of-st-andrews

V3 Hot Seat

Earlier this month I was asked to take part in the V3 Hot Seat.  V3 are well known in the industry for their reviews of the latest products and keeping us up-to-date with the latest tech news.

Some of the questions weren't the typical ones I get asked as a CIO!  Such as, my favourite film and my favourite place to escape.  Nevertheless, it was great to be asked and I really enjoyed taking part. 

http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/interview/2289759/v3-hot-seat-steve-watt-cio-at-university-of-stAndrews


I've just read V3's article (posted today) about Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer, who has announced he's going to retire within the year.  What a guy he is!
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2290835/top-10-steve-ballmer-antics-as-microsoft-ceo-prepares-to-retire

Scotland’s Digital Future: Delivery of Public Services Roadshows

I was delighted to be involved in one of the roadshows earlier this year. 

http://blogs.scotland.gov.uk/digital/2013/03/22/47/