MANAGEMENT at the Lake District National Park have turned to a North-East IT specialist for help in boosting efficiency and reducing their environmental impact by the equivalent of planting 600 trees.

Experts from Gateshead-based ITPS have spent several months helping the ICT Service at England’s largest National Park to implement virtualisation technology, consolidating the power of what was formerly 30 computer servers into just six machines.

With their help, the Lake District National Park (LDNP) has become the first within the 14-strong National Parks network to have fully virtualised its server estate.

Virtualisation technology allows the work of several servers to be carried out by one. The result is a better return on IT investment, stronger business continuity, a lower carbon footprint and cheaper running costs - typically by up to at least a third.

ITPS appointed a dedicated project manager to handle the contract, which comes following a longstanding partnership between the two organisations. ITPS manages LDNP’s maintenance and support requirements and is also regularly called in to assist with other consultancy and implementation projects.

Martin Lord, LDNP’s head of ICT, said: “We now have a more robust technology framework with less potential points of failure, and we have been able to cut energy bills as well as the amount of administration time and effort needed.

“Our in-house ICT Service had started to investigate the potential of virtualisation, but calling in the specialists from ITPS has allowed us to speed up the process and with their help, future-proof our ICT platform at the same time.

ITPS consultant Ralph Flemming added: “The majority of the average IT budget is spent on admin, maintenance and support, and virtualisation is fast becoming the smart way to make sure a business gets maximum benefit from its IT budget.”