Partner Article

Future of technology unveiled for the public sector

Representatives from fifteen North East councils gathered together in Durham last week to hear how they could benefit from the latest technology.

Business and technology experts from Durham based IT consultancy Waterstons and Microsoft addressed the conference on increasing efficiency, improving collaboration, benefiting the environment and cutting costs within the public sector.

The delegates learned how virtualisation technology could save the councils money, reduce the amount of space they need to store IT equipment, improve the flexibility and responsiveness of their IT departments, offer a robust business continuity solution and benefit the environment through a reduction in energy consumption and carbon emissions.

Waterstons’ technical director, Andrew Kershaw, said: “Servers worldwide currently gobble up an amazing 120 billion kwh of electricity each year, which is equivalent to 1% of global energy consumption or 14 medium sized power stations. By embracing virtualisation technology, this figure could be reduced significantly, which would make a really positive impact on the environment around us.”

Ken Walker, an Assistant Director at Darlington Borough Council, with responsibility for ICT, said: “Some of the larger councils in the area are leading the way and have already adopted these technologies, but Waterstons have demonstrated today that councils of all sizes can benefit. The public should see a big impact over the next few years as councils utilise technology to become greener, more efficient and most importantly offer a better service to our citizens.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .