Datapac & EMC Deal with Concern Worldwide moves humanitarian workers to the cloud
The humanitarian aid and development organisation, Concern Worldwide, is to move its computer servers to the cloud in a landmark deal with global high-tech giant EMC and Datapac that will allow staff and volunteers to access their information from remote locations across the world.
Concern will use technology which EMC helped to develop to migrate servers in the humanitarian organisation’s Operations Centre in Dublin to a new virtual environment. The Operations Centre is the hub for over 2,000 Concern computer users who are spread across the world.
EMC’s Country Manager, Jason Ward, said ‘the Concern workers will be able to access critical information from any device, anywhere at any time, giving them ultimate flexibility and reliability to run their programmes efficiently, conveniently and cost-effectively. Through the cloud, organisations across the world are managing critical business systems more efficiently, with a higher quality of service while freeing up staff resources for other duties. This is achieved at a lower cost, providing organisations with funding to drive further innovation. Concern is another example of how Datapac and EMC can help large organisations to drive productivity gains by accelerating their journey to the cloud,’ said Mr Ward.
Cloud enables people to cost-effectively access information and use applications from any device without having to download them to their local machines. Cloud involves a shift from hardware and software that individuals, businesses and governments buy and then maintain themselves, to low-cost maintenance-free services that are based on the internet and run by private companies.
Vincent Richardson, Concern’s Chief Information Officer, said: ‘our journey to cloud computing has been accelerated by Datapac and EMC’s deep cloud expertise and excellent integration between EMC, VMware & Cisco solutions. We now have an agile and resilient environment that aligns with the changing needs of the organisation.’
The new private cloud technology will virtualise Concern’s systems from an older server model. The EMC deal heralds a shift towards moving as many of Concern’s systems as possible out of the data centre and into the cloud.
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