Florida College Taps IBM Virtualization to Simplify Its Technology and Safeguard Data15 January 2006
IBM today announced that Palm Beach Community
College in Florida has selected IBM systems and Linux to simplify its IT
infrastructure.
Palm Beach Community College is a top producer of associate degrees in the
U.S., with more than 49,000 students enrolled across 90 study areas. The
college operates five campuses and centers throughout Palm Beach County
Florida and also offers online classes throughout the country.
The College is working with IBM as a strategic partner to consolidate
multiple tiers of its computing operations into a more efficient, open
infrastructure:
-- A single eServer zSeries 890, IBM's midrange mainframe, is
virtualized to run five SUSE LINUX partitions that consolidate
key financial, human resources, and facilities management
applications for the College's 2,000 employees, as well as its
entire student registration and tuition system;
-- Connected to the mainframe is 10 terabytes of storage housed on
one IBM TotalStorage DS6800 Enterprise Storage
Server system running the IBM TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller
virtualization. The storage virtualization software aggregates
data from multiple disk storage systems into a single pool of
centrally managed storage;
-- Two IBM eServer BladeCenter chassis servers connect to the
Storage Area Network (SAN) and support five different IBM Tivoli
applications and various file and print functions previously run
by 70 Dell servers; and
-- IBM Tivoli Storage Manager backs up the financial data, financial
aid, HR/payroll, distance learning and student records data on
IBM TotalStorage 3583 Ultrium Scalable Tape Library, and has
helped reduced the back-up window from 25 hours to less than 5
hours.
With this new solution in place, the College plans to have significant
paper documents imaged and digitally saved to the virtualized storage
network. The move to paperless is intended to help safeguard important
information in the event of severe hurricane conditions in southern
Florida. The mainframe's legendary reliability ensures that the student
portal and distance learning modules remain accessible around the clock to
students.
"We were looking to secure and automate as many of our critical workloads
on the mainframe and get greater economy of scale by moving to Linux for a
low-cost, high-performance solution," said Tony Parziale, CIO, Palm Beach
Community College. "As a result, we will have only a handful of servers
instead of nearly a hundred, significantly reducing our IT staff's time
maintaining and connecting systems. This allows us to focus on more
strategic initiatives like distance learning."
The zSeries system runs the College's custom Enterprise Resource Planning
system based on Software AG Adabase software running on the SUSE LINUX
Enterprise Server V9 operating system. Prior to using the z890, the College
depended on an older IBM mainframe for its ERP support. IBM Premier
Business Partner Cornerstone Systems installed the new mainframe.
"Taking advantage of innovative IBM virtualization technologies, Palm Beach
Community College is making it simpler and less expensive to manage
workloads and computer systems while also increasing resiliency and
improving access to information," said Rich Lechner, vice president of
Virtualization, IBM. "IBM is delighted to partner with Palm Beach Community
College in virtualizing open and heterogeneous IT systems across their
infrastructure."
About Palm Beach Community College
Founded in 1933 as Florida's first public community college, Palm Beach
Community College now serves more 49,000 students enrolled in more than 90
degree programs. Areas of study include associate's degrees in arts and
science, as well as other short-term certificate programs. PBCC operates
five campuses across southeastern Florida in Belle Glade, Boca Raton, Lake
Worth, Palm Beach Gardens and West Palm Beach. For more information, please
visit: http://www.pbcc.cc.fl.us.
About IBM
IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of
leadership in helping businesses innovate. Drawing on resources from across
IBM and key IBM Business Partners, IBM offers a wide range of services,
solutions and technologies that enable customers, large and small, to take
full advantage of the new era of on demand business. For more information
about IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com.
The following are either trademarks or registered trademarks of
International Business Machines Corporation in the United States or other
countries or both: IBM, the IBM e-business logo, zSeries and eServer,
Tivoli, BladeCenter. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All
others are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective
companies.
Contact:
Colleen Haikes
IBM Media Relations
(415) 545-4003
chaikes@us.ibm.com
SOURCE: IBM Corporation
Source: marketwire
All trademarks and copyrighted information contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
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