New Zealand’s Southern Institute of Technology Deploys Commvault

New Zealand’s Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) has deployed Commvault Systems, Inc.‘s integrated data protection and information management solution across the enterprise to underpin its data management strategy.

The single platform for data protection, deduplication, archiving and search has enabled the tertiary education institution to minimise business risk, reduce manpower required to manage information and support the technology team’s ability to fulfill a role as a strategic business enabler.

In partnership with local ICT consultancy, Spark Digital, SIT chose Commvault’s single powered data management platform to support the information needs of nearly 12,500 students, as well as research, academic and support staff. This has, for the first time, given SIT visibility into its data assets and reduced risk through an overhauled BC and recovery capability.

Prior to implementing Commvault, Nick Elder, ITS manager, SIT, said managing information, particularly backups, was a long process for his technicians, who were faced with data growth of 10TB each year.

“We needed staff to spend less time managing data and more time devoted to strategic activities,” said Elder. “Previously, one of our engineers would spend half a day, each day, managing backups. Today with the more holistic solution that Commvault offers, that takes minutes and gives us a lot more confidence in the management of our data assets.“

In addition to the time saving benefits, Elder also wanted a solution that would not put additional pressure on his team during the installation phase: “When we first installed the platform a year ago, I was genuinely surprised we were able to go live within two weeks of starting the process. My previous experience with these types of installations typically took up to six months, so it was very efficient.“

With staff amassing considerable volumes of teaching materials and expecting ongoing accessibility of this information, SIT is able look into its enterprise data usage and identify valuable inactive resources to manage with Commvault’s OnePass solution for automatic archiving, while remaining accessible and retrievable.

“At the back end, Commvault OnePass ensures unused data automatically moves to disk after two years, before going to tape a year later. The benefit of Commvault is that this just happens in the background, which makes it easy for our staff, as files appear to be in the same location and can be quickly available as required,” Elder added.

“Superior management of critical business information is now firmly planted on the executive agenda, and organisations in New Zealand are at the forefront of adoption,” said Prasanna Gulasekharam, Commvault’s country manager for New Zealand. “Our strong partnership with expert consultancy, Spark Digital, ensures we are jointly well positioned to enable our customers to successfully manage the full information lifecycle and drive enablement for their business.“