RNZFB: Sticking to the vision

Concentrate on your core activities, goes the business mantra. But how many organisations actually do?

Who can think of a single one that has trundled the contents of its computer server room out the door while signing up for computing services delivered on a utility basis - like electricity and water supplies - and thereafter focusing squarely on the business mission?

The Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind, a not-for-profit organisation with an annual operating  budget of over $23 million is in the business of improving the lives of its blind, deafblind and vision-impaired  members. Understandable, therefore, that it might want someone else to look after its business computing systems.

The Foundation hasn't attained computing nirvana  but it has severely thinned its computer server ranks in preparation for eventually outsourcing its data processing requirements.

As a pragmatic interim step, it has retired 30 machines, replacing them with three rack-mounted "blade" servers. Reducing the carbon footprint with the Foundation's new IBM BladeCenter has the immediate benefit of being a "green" technology - it consumes less power than the 30 previous machines so it is more cost efficient to run. What's more, it can readily be expanded by slotting additional blades into the rack.

Not that expansion of its business computing systems is in the Foundation's plans. Rather, says ICT manager Hazel Jennings, the organisation wants to concentrate its technology efforts where they directly benefit members.

For many of the 11,700 blind, deafblind and vision-impaired people who belong to the Foundation, that means giving them greater access to adaptive technologies. As core activities go, the foundation's are very specialised, with unique challenges.

For one thing, more than half its members are older than 80. For another, says Jennings, their shared disability is expensive to overcome.

"There is a huge cost to blindness.   At the end of the day you have to get around things most people take for granted."

But progress is being made.

"Technology is taking some huge leaps to help the blind at the moment. It's stuff we hope to build on."

A powerful spur has been the passing in the United States of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which requires federal agencies to provide disabled people with the same access to information as the able-bodied. Suppliers wanting to do business with the US government have therefore had to ensure their systems are accessible to those with disabilities.

"We're starting to see that really come through from the major manufacturers," Jennings says.

Ultimately, the Foundation wants to get business computing out of its hair. The first step to that happy state is a move, through IBM Business Partner Eagle Technology, to a managed services IT model.

It has farewelled 11 physical servers, some of which were approaching a decade old, replacing them with three blade servers which, using virtualisation software, behave like the 9 physical servers that have been retired The blade centre now hosts approx 40 production servers, replacing an older virtual environment and the remaining physical servers.

That has a couple of big benefits.

The first is reduced running costs. Instead of 11 machines consuming electricity and requiring cooling, the Foundation now effectively has just one. That represents a cut in the cost of power of about 20 per cent.

Virtual servers have a real price tag in the form of software licences, but above about 20 servers, in the case of the Foundation, the virtual versus hardware cost calculation comes out in their favour.

Quite apart from reduced cost, the Foundation is getting an enormous performance gain from its BladeCenter setup. Jennings says some applications are running 10 times faster and, where it was previously impossible for multiple users to simultaneously access some applications, that limitation has now disappeared.

"Background batch processes that used to take the best part of 48 hours to run are now running in under three, and library staff who used to struggle to application share are now having no trouble. So we're seeing some definite performance improvements at the user level."

The library is a key member service. But a collection of audio books that are despatched by post represents a different management problem than a normal library.

"We have hundreds of talking books coming in and out through the post every day so we have a very busy mail room," Jennings says.

"One of the things we're looking at doing is moving from a postal delivery of talking books to an internet delivery service.  This is world-leading stuff, so for us the web is going to be quite a big plank moving forward."

Thousands of recordings of New Zealand publications, read in many instances by their authors, form part of the Foundation's collection. As part of the server upgrade, the Foundation has installed 10 terabytes of data storage to house the collection.

It has also conducted a world first trial  distributing digital talking  books via the internet. That is part of a wider plan to create a centre of excellence for adaptive technologies, Jennings says, that will support members and one day could assist employers of blind people on a paid-for basis.

In the background, the Foundation will be moving from today's managed services IT model to outsourcing its business systems.

"We would like the IT infrastructure to work like the electricity - you turn it on , you turn it off and you only notice it when the bulb blows, and could that be changed really quickly please?"

The reward Jennings gets from working at the Foundation doesn't come from meeting the usual IT metrics, she says, but from being in an environment where everyone is working to make a difference.

"The technology is moving really well to make a huge difference to our members' lives." Her aim is to be better able to harness it.

This story is based on information provided by the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind and illustrates how one organisation uses IBM products. Many factors have contributed to the results and benefits described; IBM does not guarantee comparable results elsewhere.