The Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development is to implement a storage area network (SAN) and has chosen a supplier following the completion of a bidding process.
The SAN will be implemented by Compaq and its partner company Xpert Technology in a contract worth more than €1m. It forms part of a wider IT strategy adopted by the department two years ago. This involved moving to a three-tier technology architecture, away from the Department’s traditional mainframe systems.
The three tiers comprise storage, application and database servers. Having identified each of these requirements, the Department invited bids from all suppliers and ultimately chose a system based on Compaq’s Alpha hardware.
The SAN will handle all the Department’s key applications, some of which are new and some re-engineered. This includes Web-based applications for in-house users. In the longer term, this capability will be extended to customers of the Department in the agri-business and farming sectors, under the aegis of the Department’s e-government strategy.
Compaq has delivered 11 Alphas and a 4 terabyte Storage Area Network and is providing on-going support. This environment provides development, testing and production facilities for three major systems initially, one of which is now live.
The Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development previously worked with Digital and then Compaq on various networking projects since 1994. Earlier this year it completed the first phase of its network infrastructure, supplied by Compaq, as part of its Office IT Upgrade Programme, which also forms part of the department’s IT Strategy adopted in early 2000.
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