CASE STUDY
HAVING THE ABILITY TO SIMPLY SCALE AS AND
WHEN NEEDED IS A GREAT RESOURCE. WE
CAN’T BUDGET FOR UNKNOWN GROWTH AND
CAPACITY AND IT’S REASSURING TO KNOW
SCALE COMPUTING WILL BE ABLE TO MEET
OUR FUTURE REQUIREMENTS.
T
he Roman Catholic Diocese of
Westminster is one of the smallest
dioceses in England and Wales in
geographical area, but the largest in terms of
Catholic population and priests.
The diocesan boundaries include the London
boroughs north of the Thames, between
the River Lea to the east, the Borough of
Hillingdon to the east and including the
county of Hertfordshire to the north.
With over 200 parishes and 200 schools,
hundreds of clergy members and numerous
societies and departments, the Diocese runs
as a company and has many of the same
requirements as a business.
Working with Paralogic to
solve IT challenges
Many of the departments and parishes have
similar IT needs to business branch offices
64
INTELLIGENTCIO
and the Diocese turned to its long-term ICT
partner Paralogic, to help find a solution
that could support day-to-day operations.
The Diocese wanted to take advantage of
the latest technology that would enable
the parishes and multiple departments to
engage with each other and embrace new
applications. Rod de Silva, ICT Manager for
the Diocese of Westminster, said: “We’ve
worked with Paralogic as our main ICT
partner for a number of years. The close
working relationship we enjoy means the
team understand how we try to organise our
time. We consulted them on the need for
upgrades and they came back to us with a
proposal that was right for us.”
Previously, the Diocese had four physical
servers hosting virtual machines and a local
SAN device. “We needed to replace our IT
system as it was reaching its end of life and
we saw this as an opportunity to upgrade. Like
many organisations, the technology team
has finite resources. We try and organise our
time so that 50% is spent on support issues
and 50% on special projects and strategic
matters. It was important for us to have a
server infrastructure that was resilient and as
easy to use as possible,” noted de Silva.
Adam Plant, Director at Paralogic,
commented: “The Diocese has similar
requirements to any other organisation and
being able to implement an IT solution that
could support the multiple departments was
critical. Scale Computing’s hyperconverged
appliance seemed like a natural fit and we
worked with them throughout the process
from the initial purchasing, through to the
implementation and support, to ensure this
was a smooth process.”
Turning to hyperconvergence
It was essential that Westminster could
provide server access across the Diocese and
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