F5 Case Studies Illinois School Districts Get Affordable Cloud Services, Cut Storage Costs with BIG-IP Products and ARX

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	Illinois School Districts Get Affordable Cloud Services, Cut Storage Costs with BIG-IP Products and ARX F5

Illinois School Districts Get Affordable Cloud Services, Cut Storage Costs with BIG-IP Products and ARX

Technology Category	Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
Applicable Industries	Education
Applicable Functions	Business Operation
Services	Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services System Integration
Challenge	IlliniCloud, a non-profit cooperative that hosts applications for school administration, facilities management, student performance tracking, multimedia, and library management for K–12 school districts throughout Illinois, was facing a challenge. The organization needed to optimize the delivery of these services through its private cloud and help member districts manage annual data growth of up to 300 percent. The districts were struggling with providing their own IT services, with budgets varying widely from district to district, leading to inefficiencies and duplicate efforts. Managing data was one of the biggest challenges districts faced; many were hardpressed to provide adequate storage capacity, and they needed better tools for managing, disseminating, and archiving data. Nearly 95 percent of school districts lacked disaster recovery (DR) plans, so applications and data were potentially at risk. Read More
About Customer	IlliniCloud is a non-profit cooperative that provides IT services to K–12 school districts throughout Illinois. The organization hosts applications for school administration, facilities management, student performance tracking, multimedia, and library management. IlliniCloud was founded in 2007 by Bloomington Public Schools, which has one of the largest IT budgets of all 860 Illinois school districts. The cooperative uses three existing facilities owned by local districts and has deployed 30 VMware virtual servers based on HP/Cisco converged computing platforms. Internet access, video conferencing, and multimedia sharing are facilitated by Illinois Century Network. Read More
Solution	To address the challenges, IlliniCloud chose F5® BIG-IP® Application Delivery Controllers and ARX® intelligent storage virtualization products. The BIG-IP LTM devices intelligently load balance and manage all incoming user requests, offload compute-intensive and repetitive tasks from Web and application servers, and provide advanced application security, acceleration, and optimization. These features help ensure that IlliniCloud users always have consistent and highly reliable access to their data and cloud-based applications. The ARX solution was chosen for its advanced file virtualization, storage tiering, and data archiving capabilities. It is compatible with most NAS storage devices, allowing IlliniCloud to enforce intelligent data management policies and automate storage management tasks in real time. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services

Applicable Industries

Education

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

System Integration

Challenge

IlliniCloud, a non-profit cooperative that hosts applications for school administration, facilities management, student performance tracking, multimedia, and library management for K–12 school districts throughout Illinois, was facing a challenge. The organization needed to optimize the delivery of these services through its private cloud and help member districts manage annual data growth of up to 300 percent. The districts were struggling with providing their own IT services, with budgets varying widely from district to district, leading to inefficiencies and duplicate efforts. Managing data was one of the biggest challenges districts faced; many were hardpressed to provide adequate storage capacity, and they needed better tools for managing, disseminating, and archiving data. Nearly 95 percent of school districts lacked disaster recovery (DR) plans, so applications and data were potentially at risk.

About Customer

IlliniCloud is a non-profit cooperative that provides IT services to K–12 school districts throughout Illinois. The organization hosts applications for school administration, facilities management, student performance tracking, multimedia, and library management. IlliniCloud was founded in 2007 by Bloomington Public Schools, which has one of the largest IT budgets of all 860 Illinois school districts. The cooperative uses three existing facilities owned by local districts and has deployed 30 VMware virtual servers based on HP/Cisco converged computing platforms. Internet access, video conferencing, and multimedia sharing are facilitated by Illinois Century Network.

Solution

To address the challenges, IlliniCloud chose F5® BIG-IP® Application Delivery Controllers and ARX® intelligent storage virtualization products. The BIG-IP LTM devices intelligently load balance and manage all incoming user requests, offload compute-intensive and repetitive tasks from Web and application servers, and provide advanced application security, acceleration, and optimization. These features help ensure that IlliniCloud users always have consistent and highly reliable access to their data and cloud-based applications. The ARX solution was chosen for its advanced file virtualization, storage tiering, and data archiving capabilities. It is compatible with most NAS storage devices, allowing IlliniCloud to enforce intelligent data management policies and automate storage management tasks in real time.

Impact #1	IlliniCloud was able to provide cost-effective and highly reliable cloud-based applications to member districts.
Impact #2	The co-op significantly reduced its storage costs and recouped its ARX investment in less than one year.
Impact #3	The BIG-IP devices provide the redundancy and uptime required, ensuring users always have reliable access to applications and services.

Impact #1

IlliniCloud was able to provide cost-effective and highly reliable cloud-based applications to member districts.

Impact #2

The co-op significantly reduced its storage costs and recouped its ARX investment in less than one year.

Impact #3

The BIG-IP devices provide the redundancy and uptime required, ensuring users always have reliable access to applications and services.

Benefit #1	Realized ROI in less than one year
Benefit #2	Provided reliable IT services to 860 Illinois school districts
Benefit #3	Reclaimed more than 70 percent of tier 1 fibre channel storage

Benefit #1

Realized ROI in less than one year

Benefit #2

Provided reliable IT services to 860 Illinois school districts

Benefit #3

Reclaimed more than 70 percent of tier 1 fibre channel storage

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Overview

Illinois School Districts Get Affordable Cloud Services, Cut Storage Costs with BIG-IP Products and ARX

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit