Company: St Edmund’s College, Ipswichhttp://www.sec.qld.edu.au/

Industry: Education

Area: Server and storage solution

Provided service: Project management, planning and implementation of 2 x Hitachi Data Systems HUS110 and 3 x HP Servers

Challenges: Project delivery was required within a short timeframe and during implementation the server room was part of a construction site.

Case Study

St Edmund’s College prepares its students for the

future with NTT Communications ICT Solutions

The educators...

St Edmund’s College, an all-boys catholic school based in

Ipswich, Queensland, caters for 950 students ranging from years

8-12, with a staff of 150 and an IT team of five. The College’s

mission is to ensure all students are resilient and wise enough

once they leave St Edmund’s in Year 12, to take their place in

a society that is challenging, demanding and enriching. The

College provides a range of learning facilities to ensure that

students have the tools to succeed in the 21st century workplace.

With the majority of its hardware reaching end of warranty, St

Edmund’s was looking to upgrade to new servers and storage

solutions to ensure the teaching staff and students had the

flexibility and reliability in the IT systems to support teaching and

learning. It was also extremely important given the timing and

the number of users to avoid the impact of any downtime.

A partnership in learning...

With 950 students, 150 staff members and over 1,250 smart

devices on campus the school needed an IT system that would

comfortably met the demands of the students as they embarked

on multimedia projects and accessed their work on the school

network. St Edmund’s required an average capacity increase of

300Gbs per month.

“Our students are pretty switched on and use advanced, data

hungry programs like AutoCAD for 3D modelling, they also bring

a range of smart devices into the picture and we wanted to

ensure we have the capacity to meet the demand so the teachers

and students have no boundaries to learning!”

To meet the demands of tomorrow’s information, St Edmunds

needed to ensure its students would have reliable and fast

access to technology for years to come. After completing a

review of current data requirements Jay Basford, IT Manager at

St Edmund’s College projected the future requirements of the

school.

“Looking at the data use of our students, the

influx of smart devices and the school’s intention

to grow its student base, we calculated a data

growth curve for the next three years showing

that we would need an infrastructure that

would take us from the current 15Tb of useable

capacity to 40Tbs of usable capacity,” said Basford.

“Schools are now technology hubs and require the same security

and reliability as companies with 1,000 employees or more.

Schools are very lean, but from a user base and a technology

basis they generally have more bits and pieces compared to a lot

of multinational companies and all with a much lower budget,”

said Basford.

“Complex environments, such as ours, require peace of mind

that comes with having enterprise grade warranty to ensure that

we’re covered in the event of a failure.”

St edmund’S It Journey wIth ntt ICt | CASE STUDY

The evaluation…

After a competitive tender for solutions and implementation

partners St Edmund’s established a partnership with NTT

Communications ICT Solutions (NTT ICT).

“NTT ICT not only provided us with a range

of choices from multiple vendors, they were

also able to support us throughout the

implementation process. The team at NTT

ICT really went a lot further than a lot of

other companies. Rather than just picking a

solution off the shelf, they did the research and

put together a system that does the job and

managed to keep our budget in the black,” said Basford.

Looking to find the right solution that would be simple and

easy to manage, while also reducing the costs to the school, St

Edmund’s College worked with NTT ICT to identify the specific

storage and server technology that was required to support their

upgrade.

Talking about the solutions required NTT ICT’s account executive,

Liz Bishell said: “Wanting more capacity, performance and space,

we provided St Edmund’s with a range of solutions to suit the

school’s needs and budget.

After consultation and consideration phases, we settled on the

final solution including two HUS110 storage arrays, three HP

DL360 servers and the ongoing support from the NTT ICT team

to ensure smooth implementation and guaranteed reliability.”

Nigel Hackney, NTT ICT’s pre-sales solution architect worked

alongside St Edmund’s to ensure the provision of a cost effective,

sustainable and design ready solution that would help manage

the college’s IT growth.

“It was a very honest and open approach from

the start working quite closely with Jay and the

team,” said Bishell.

“What we tried to provide St Edmund’s College was a solution

that was right for them and one that was also affordable. We

made sure that we provided a broad range of solutions at several

different price points to find a happy medium for St Edmund’s

College on price, performance and capacity,” said Bishell.

As part of the solution, the NTT ICT team provided St Edmund’s

College with a range of capabilities including: dynamic

provisioning, sync replication, a range of management tools and

training on the new platform.

“The chosen solution in the end, comprising of Hitachi storage

and HP servers provided the performance and capacity that St

Edmund’s College really needed. A range of solutions such as the

ability to tier storage, reducing overall cost, increased scalability

and unified storage, were key components in meeting their

requirements. We also helped the team move on to the new

system by providing a range of training sessions that will help

manage the solution cost effectively,” said Bishell.

The report card…

Following the initial implementation, St Edmund’s College

experienced a range of benefits in key areas of performance,

capacity and reliability compared to its previous hardware.

“We have found that the Hitachi solution requires much less

management and makes it much easier for us to maintain. For us

it’s much simpler to use which has freed up our time to focus on

doing more with our IT. It has given the IT team back at least two

hours a month, which might not seem like a lot but it can make

all the difference,” said Basford.

“We have not had to directly access the servers in order to run

maintenance in the seven months since the implementation,

which is a huge improvement on our previous system which we

were tinkering with on a monthly and sometimes weekly basis,”

said Basford.

Through its close relationships with partners and seamless

project management, NTT ICT was able to deliver and implement

the IT project on time and budget.

“NTT ICT had an ongoing interaction with the

team and managed several challenges that arose

during the implementation process. The team at

NTT ICT really found a way around everything –

including the fact that the server room was part

of a construction site during the whole upgrade

process,” said Basford.

St edmund’S It Journey wIth ntt ICt | CASE STUDY

The next stage…

Soon after completing the initial implementation, St Edmund’s

College decided to purchase a host of solutions from NTT ICT

and is currently looking to upgrade its entire network, including

updates for its existing server software and switches.

NTT ICT continues to be on hand to work directly with the team

to support the new system and deliver new products, as well as

sourcing new technology solutions as required.

“Having an organisation that is able to tap into

the wealth of vendors that exist in the market

is invaluable for our business and has meant

that we have been able to complete this project

with ease. We have a huge level of trust in NTT

ICT, earned through this implementation, which

will stick with us for any future projects for the

school,” said Basford.

About NTT Communications ICT Solutions

NTT Com ICT Solutions (Australia) Pty Ltd is a wholly owned

subsidiary company of NTT Communications, the global data and IP

services arm of Fortune Global 500 telecom leader, Nippon

Telegraph & Telephone Corporation (NTT). The company was

launched in 2013 and comprises of NTT Communications’ Australian

entities NTT Australia, Frontline Systems Australia, and Harbour MSP.

NTT Com ICT Solutions (Australia) Pty Ltd is a fully integrated,

one-stop hub for IT services. The company delivers end-to-end

information and communication technology solutions supported

with professional services, managed services, and ever-ready

technical support working with enterprise-size Australian organisa-

tions that want to re-imagine IT through infrastructure innovation.

Services include a world-class Tier-1 Internet backbone, secure

closed networks, security, system integration, network and ap-

plication management, managed hosting, infrastructure resale, and

global content delivery services. In addition, NTT Com ICT Solutions

is a data centre service provider, specialising in fully integrated

colocation, private cloud, and managed IT services.

www.nttict.com

About St Edmund’s College

St Edmund’s College seeks to provide the best possible education

for our students in an environment which is permeated by con-

sciousness of the presence of God and love for Christ. The College

is located in Mary Street, Woodend, Ipswich and will soon celebrate

50 years “On the Hill”.

The staff at St Edmund’s College are committed to providing out

students with an educational framework suitable to the needs of

boys and men. Our mission is to have our young men resilient and

wise enough to leave us in Year 12, to take their place in a society

that is challenging, demanding and enriching. As well as striving for

academic success in the classroom, it is necessary to develop

emotional and social skills. Students need to feel that they belong to

our community and that they are valued by the St Edmund’s family.

www.sec.qld.edu.au/

St edmund’S It Journey wIth ntt ICt | CASE STUDY