User Requisition of Virtual Servers Saves University over $2M and Cuts Deployment from Weeks to Minutes

A recent case study published for CIO Executive Council members worldwide highlights an exemplary service improvement in UNT System’s IT Shared Services (ITSS) that centers around an IT solution titled “Virtual Server Services.”  The CIO Executive Council provides a noncompetitive, nonthreatening environment for CIOs to exchange information, discuss challenges and opportunities, and share experiences.  Top IT executives are able to engage in robust interactions in order to bring measurable value to their organizations and to support their professional development while being free of the distraction of vendors or commercial interests.

 The case study about the ITSS virtualization service is available using the associated file link after this article.  The goal of the project for implementing the service was to implement full server virtualization using management and request tools that allow users to requisition their own virtual servers.  One the of the most dramatic outcomes of the successful implementation of the solution has been that deployment time for servers has gone from upwards of six to eight weeks to five to 10 minutes.  Equally impressive are the cost savings of $200K per year in power and cooling in the data centers, salary savings of approximately $120K per year from reduced server management costs, and about $2.3M in capital savings for server hardware over the life of the project which is expected to be five years.

 The case study was submitted by Michael Di Paolo, Associate Vice Chancellor & CIO, UNT System, who is a member of the CIO Executive Council and was written in conjunction with CIO Magazine writers as a PeerIntelligence document.  PeerIntelligence is practical insights for Council members that combine real-world details of a case study with aggregate benchmarks from the council’s global survey.  Craig Terrell, Enterprise Systems Infrastructure Services Director, was the primary ITSS spokesperson during interviews for the study and led the team members responsible for the activities that created the work and savings described in the study.