Planning a University's IT Infrastructure: ICL Services' Case Study

This press release was orginally distributed by ReleaseWire

Tatarstan, Russia -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/20/2021 -- Kalashnikov Izhevsk State Technical University has 64 departments and 8 educational buildings.

KEY CHALLENGES

The Kalashnikov Izhevsk State Technical University's IT infrastructure has developed over the past 20 years; it's built up of different solutions and systems that were introduced by the staff, students and third-party contractors. As a result, the infrastructure became hard to maintain – cables were wearing out; the equipment was idle and kept breaking down; solving each problem was taking too much time.

Furthermore, computer performance could no longer satisfy the requirements of the departments and laboratories, and old hardware did not support the university's engineering software.

To get a subsidy for IT infrastructure modernization, the university had to provide project documentation along with a list of necessary equipment. To do so, the university contacted VimpelCom, and the latter outsourced the development of the IT infrastructure modernization project to the company's strategic partner, ICL Services.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

The project's goal is to plan out a new IT infrastructure for the university based on the customer's business needs. The new project has to:

- take into account the requirements of different institutes and laboratories in terms of computer performance, network connectivity and information security;

- incorporate the existing equipment from different vendors as much as possible;

- ensure high performance and fault tolerance.

BUSINESS ADVANTAGES

- ICL Services has extensive experience in planning and implementation of IT infrastructure across a diverse range of facilities, from control rooms to regional governments and organizing low current systems for large logistics centers to developing IT and security systems for a car manufacturer.

- In addition to infrastructure planning, the company also carries out the implementation and maintenance of systems and equipment. This allows specialists to take into account any problems with IT infrastructure operation and minimize the risks at the planning stage.

- ICL Services plans and implements engineering systems, infrastructure services, as well as information security, cloud infrastructure and virtualization environment solutions

OUR IMPLEMENTED SOLUTION
During the pre-project inspection, ICL Services specialists travelled to the customer's facility, interviewed university staff and assessed the spaces. This resulted in a project timeline that was used to coordinate the choice of tech solutions and methods of their implementation with the customer at every stage.

The project can be divided into several modules.

Server infrastructure
The project includes four servers, one storage system, one slow storage, a control switch, two data center cores, backup site switches and a backup storage system server. The plan features over 20 firewalls, 500 optical transceivers for access switches and 50 aggregation switches. Huawei was the main equipment vendor.

Engineering infrastructure
The project involves setting up a small data center, a diesel generator, UPS units for fault tolerance, a power supply system and lighting.

Automatic gaseous fire suppression system
The planned out gaseous fire suppression systems will automatically detect fires, calculate the required amount of the extinguishing agent and start extinguishing the fire automatically. The plan includes a separate automatic gaseous fire suppression system for the data processing center.

Monitoring systems
The project includes a LAN management and monitoring system and a general monitoring system for all equipment.

LAN and wireless networks
A Wi-Fi network with 250 access points was planned out for seven multistory university buildings. This solution helped increase the coverage to 95%.

CCTV and PACS
ICL Services specialists also developed project documentation for the closed-circuit television system and physical access control systems.

At the end of the pre-project inspection, the customer received a printed set of drawings and an electronic copy of all documents. ICL Services experts also helped create the terms of reference for project implementation.

ACHIEVED RESULTS

The customer received a detailed description and a specific plan for IT infrastructure development and organization. The project involves:

1) Doubling the server capacity, which will provide all divisions with the required capacity and help create a virtualization environment.

2) Introducing a system for backups and hardware fault tolerance, which did not exist before.

3) Developing a local area network management and monitoring system for all equipment.

4) The modular design of the IT infrastructure and the description of each element in each system will make it easier for the customer to operate the systems and scale them up.

About ICL Services
ICL Services is among the top 10 largest IT service companies in Russia and top-100 best IT outsourcing companies in the world; an important part of the ICL group of companies and a key business partner of Fujitsu. Company's core competence is smart people who work in streamlined processes on hundreds of projects. The service catalog contains over 60 services.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/planning-a-universitys-it-infrastructure-icl-services-case-study-1347813.htm