New Zealand's Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) has upgraded its data protection and information management with Commvault's integrated solution.

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.

Headquartered in Invercargill with campuses around the South Island, SIT has deployed a single platform for data protection, deduplication, archiving and search.

According to Commvault this 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.

Furthermore, the upgrade has given SIT visibility into its data assets and reduced risk through an overhauled business continuity and recovery capability, the organisation says.

Nick Elder, SIT ITS Manager, says prior to implementing Commvault managing information, particularly back-ups, was a long process for his technicians, who were faced with data growth of 10 terabytes each year.

“We needed staff to spend less time managing data and more time devoted to strategic activities. Previously, one of our engineers would spend half a day, each day, managing back-ups.

“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,” says Elder.

In addition to the time saving benefits, Elder says he 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,” he says.

With staff amassing considerable volumes of teaching materials and expecting ongoing accessibility of this information, SIT can now 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 says.

“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,” says Prasanna Gulasekharam, Commvault 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," he says.