Surrey moves data centres to cloud with Nutanix
Surrey County Council has chosen cloud infrastructure company Nutanix for the migration of its existing data centre infrastructures to a shared services cloud hosting platform. The platform will allow Surrey to offer connectivity, cloud, virtualisation and application hosting services to not only its own organisation, but also to other local government and healthcare organisations across the region. The project supports the council's long-term financial strategy to save at least £200m over the next five years, helping it to become more operationally efficient by reducing IT operating costs. The new Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform will offer Surrey's regional borough and district councils a centrally-managed and serviced infrastructure and computing environment, enabling them to move away from owning and supporting their own separate dedicated infrastructures, data centres and computing environments. Its introduction will also allow them to exploit the benefits of virtualisation, with the ultimate goal of consolidating and standardising to a common platform and application set across all of the councils.
Pictured: Surrey County Hall, Kingston upon Thames, by David Howard / Geograph.org.uk
Nutanix: www.nutanix.com
Wigan Council selects Invoice4 for accounts and purchasing
Wigan Council has bought the UNIT4 Invoice4 solution from business change software firm UNIT4 to support its accounts payable and purchase to pay processes. The solution will enable the council to scan incoming paper invoices and automatically import invoices that are received by email. Once imported the Invoice4 solution will use intelligent data capture technologies to extract key information and identify invoice exceptions at the earliest opportunity. By adopting Invoice4, purchase invoices will be received into the UNIT4 ERP solution faster, with less effort and greater accuracy. It will also provide easy and rapid access to the electronic images held in the council's existing UNIT4 ERP solution and deliver a structured process for managing highlighted exceptions. Invoice4 is a UNIT4 solution, powered by strategic partner Intelligent Capture, a PROACTIS Group company.
UNIT4: www.unit4.com
Royal Brompton & Harefield chooses CSC for health IT systems
Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust has chosen two healthcare software solutions from CSC. The trust, the largest specialist heart and lung centre in the UK, will employ the Lorenzo electronic patient record (EPR) system, and the MedChart electronic medication management system. Lorenzo is an EPR which has been designed to meet the needs of NHS hospital trusts. It is already live in 12 NHS trusts, with a further five deploying over the next year. Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust is the second to take Lorenzo outside of the terms of a central agreement between CSC and the UK Department of Health. MedChart, is already used by hospitals in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. It is a web-based solution, which includes electronic prescribing, pharmacy review, drug administration and clinical decision support. Designed by clinicians, it streamlines the medication prescribing, pharmacy review and administration processes to reduce risk, harm, confusion, error and inefficiency and improve coordination between clinical teams.
CSC: www.csc.com
Medway to expand library-based service hubs with KANA
Medway council has worked with KANA Software to create three community hubs in major libraries integrating council services with the library service desk, enabling members of the public to report local problems, gather advice or return documentation. The community hubs are open 12 hours a day from 8am-8pm, expanding on the traditional library service desk and providing space for up to four members of staff, freeing up library staff to perform their primary roles. A fourth hub is due to be launched at the beginning of 2015, with a fifth planned to follow. Most services are also being delivered with self service capability, with more coming online for citizens in April and May. The council has already achieved £5.98m of savings against its two-year target of £5.91m, with five year predicted savings of £14.6m. Many service areas are also benefiting from the changes as they no longer have to handle routine telephone calls, the council says. This has been particularly significant on the libraries and leisure centres where they can now concentrate on the customers who are present and not have to be distracted by telephone calls.
KANASoftware: www.kana.com
