Partner Perspectives Supplied
“Cloud” solution speeds info movement OCTOBER, 2010
Overview Foothills Research Institute is one of Canada’s most successful research and demonstration organizations, dedicated to exploring new ways to manage natural resources for economic, social and environmental values. It has 26 staff members who provide information and administrative services to dozens of researchers in several countries, seven sponsoring partner organizations, 33 management partner organizations, 67 program and project partners, and 32 supporting partners. The Institute’s stock in trade is information, gained from more than a decade of research and solution development on a large part of west-central Alberta. It manages five or six terabytes of data – with one terabyte being the equivalent of a trillion alpha or numeric characters – and the number is growing rapidly.
Challenge
Partner Perspective INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY “For a fixed monthly fee, it (the Institute) saves anywhere between 35%
Information must be easily stored, manipulated, accessed and shared to be useful. Foothills Research Institute faced a growing list of challenges before deciding something had to change. • Inability to access basic business applications and data from outside the office. • Inability to access specialized applications like GIS from remote locations using a regular high-speed broadband Internet connection • Calendars, e-mails, contacts and tasks were not networked to individual smartphones. • Lack of dedicated technical support to deal with growing and changing business requirements. • Desktop and Notebook computers were aging. • It was very difficult to quickly and easily distribute large volume of research data to sponsors and partners.
Solution
agility, collaboration,
Nirix Technology of Edmonton proposed an innovative and leading-edge cloud computing service named Hosted Desktop. This service allows the Institute to host all of its business applications, e-mail, data, and more on Nirix’s high-performance hosting platform, the “cloud,” and can access it from anywhere, any time, using any device, over any high-speed Internet connection. Staff can, for instance, check on the progress of long-running processes when at home or elsewhere. For a fixed monthly fee, it saves anywhere between 35% and 50% of its previous total IT costs while achieving a higher level of business agility, collaboration, performance and growth potential.
performance and growth
Results
potential.“
It’s a better system for less money, giving a double benefit to sponsors and partners who expect cost-efficient and effective solutions. Researchers who spend spring and summer in the field can input, access and share data from their laptop no matter where they are. “Staff members say they can access information such as GIS data twice as fast,” says project manager Steven Hsu of Nirix Technology. “Technical staff members are already working from home and other locations on a frequent basis because of the service’s great flexibility and accessibility.”
and 50% of its previous total IT costs while achieving a higher level of business
Stephen Hsu
Project Manager, Nirix Technology
For more see
www.foothillsresearchinstitute.ca