May 20, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- The provincial government of British Columbia is over halfway through a major data center consolidation project, migrating an unknown quantity of servers in 400 remote offices into 90 data centers, according to a report by Next-gen Data Centers.
The servers being migrated, estimated to number more than 400, are largely Windows-based, though the government does deploy servers that run on the Unix and Linux platforms. The servers come from a wide range of vendors, including Hewlett-Packard, Sun and IBM.
Martin Webb, the provincial government's manager of data network operations, told Next-gen Data Centers that the migration, which began a year ago, is nearly two-thirds of the way through. The BC government, Webb added, is also moving away from mainframe-based applications because it is easier to deploy applications in a server environment.
According to the report, the consolidation of disparate servers is critical for the government of a province as large as BC, which covers an area larger than France and Germany combined.
