St Edmund’s College in Ipswich, Queensland upgraded its IT infrastructure to accommodate 950 students and 150 staff, addressing growing data demands with a partnership with NTT Communications ICT Solutions. The implementation included Hitachi storage and HP servers, resulting in improved performance, lower management needs, and a smoother educational experience. Following successful implementation, the college is planning further upgrades and continues to work with NTT ICT for ongoing support and new technology solutions.

1. Company: St Edmund’s College, Ipswich
http://www.sec.qld.edu.au/
Industry: Education
Area: Server and storage solution
Provided service: Project management, planning and
implementation of 2 x Hitachi Data Systems HUS110
and 3 x HP Servers
Challenges: Project delivery was required within a
short timeframe and during implementation the
server room was part of a construction site.
Case Study
St Edmund’s College prepares its students for the
future with NTT Communications ICT Solutions

2. The educators...
St Edmund’s College, an all-boys catholic school based in
Ipswich, Queensland, caters for 950 students ranging from years
8-12, with a staff of 150 and an IT team of five. The College’s
mission is to ensure all students are resilient and wise enough
once they leave St Edmund’s in Year 12, to take their place in
a society that is challenging, demanding and enriching. The
College provides a range of learning facilities to ensure that
students have the tools to succeed in the 21st century workplace.
With the majority of its hardware reaching end of warranty, St
Edmund’s was looking to upgrade to new servers and storage
solutions to ensure the teaching staff and students had the
flexibility and reliability in the IT systems to support teaching and
learning. It was also extremely important given the timing and
the number of users to avoid the impact of any downtime.
A partnership in learning...
With 950 students, 150 staff members and over 1,250 smart
devices on campus the school needed an IT system that would
comfortably met the demands of the students as they embarked
on multimedia projects and accessed their work on the school
network. St Edmund’s required an average capacity increase of
300Gbs per month.
“Our students are pretty switched on and use advanced, data
hungry programs like AutoCAD for 3D modelling, they also bring
a range of smart devices into the picture and we wanted to
ensure we have the capacity to meet the demand so the teachers
and students have no boundaries to learning!”
To meet the demands of tomorrow’s information, St Edmunds
needed to ensure its students would have reliable and fast
access to technology for years to come. After completing a
review of current data requirements Jay Basford, IT Manager at
St Edmund’s College projected the future requirements of the
school.
“Looking at the data use of our students, the
influx of smart devices and the school’s intention
to grow its student base, we calculated a data
growth curve for the next three years showing
that we would need an infrastructure that
would take us from the current 15Tb of useable
capacity to 40Tbs of usable capacity,” said Basford.
“Schools are now technology hubs and require the same security
and reliability as companies with 1,000 employees or more.
Schools are very lean, but from a user base and a technology
basis they generally have more bits and pieces compared to a lot
of multinational companies and all with a much lower budget,”
said Basford.
“Complex environments, such as ours, require peace of mind
that comes with having enterprise grade warranty to ensure that
we’re covered in the event of a failure.”
St edmund’s IT Journey with NTT ICT | Case Study

3. The evaluation…
After a competitive tender for solutions and implementation
partners St Edmund’s established a partnership with NTT
Communications ICT Solutions (NTT ICT).
“NTT ICT not only provided us with a range
of choices from multiple vendors, they were
also able to support us throughout the
implementation process. The team at NTT
ICT really went a lot further than a lot of
other companies. Rather than just picking a
solution off the shelf, they did the research and
put together a system that does the job and
managed to keep our budget in the black,” said
Basford.
Looking to find the right solution that would be simple and
easy to manage, while also reducing the costs to the school, St
Edmund’s College worked with NTT ICT to identify the specific
storage and server technology that was required to support their
upgrade.
Talking about the solutions required NTT ICT’s account executive,
Liz Bishell said: “Wanting more capacity, performance and space,
we provided St Edmund’s with a range of solutions to suit the
school’s needs and budget.
After consultation and consideration phases, we settled on the
final solution including two HUS110 storage arrays, three HP
DL360 servers and the ongoing support from the NTT ICT team
to ensure smooth implementation and guaranteed reliability.”
Nigel Hackney, NTT ICT’s pre-sales solution architect worked
alongside St Edmund’s to ensure the provision of a cost effective,
sustainable and design ready solution that would help manage
the college’s IT growth.
“It was a very honest and open approach from
the start working quite closely with Jay and the
team,” said Bishell.
“What we tried to provide St Edmund’s College was a solution
that was right for them and one that was also affordable. We
made sure that we provided a broad range of solutions at several
different price points to find a happy medium for St Edmund’s
College on price, performance and capacity,” said Bishell.
As part of the solution, the NTT ICT team provided St Edmund’s
College with a range of capabilities including: dynamic
provisioning, sync replication, a range of management tools and
training on the new platform.
“The chosen solution in the end, comprising of Hitachi storage
and HP servers provided the performance and capacity that St
Edmund’s College really needed. A range of solutions such as the
ability to tier storage, reducing overall cost, increased scalability
and unified storage, were key components in meeting their
requirements. We also helped the team move on to the new
system by providing a range of training sessions that will help
manage the solution cost effectively,” said Bishell.
The report card…
Following the initial implementation, St Edmund’s College
experienced a range of benefits in key areas of performance,
capacity and reliability compared to its previous hardware.
“We have found that the Hitachi solution requires much less
management and makes it much easier for us to maintain. For us
it’s much simpler to use which has freed up our time to focus on
doing more with our IT. It has given the IT team back at least two
hours a month, which might not seem like a lot but it can make
all the difference,” said Basford.
“We have not had to directly access the servers in order to run
maintenance in the seven months since the implementation,
which is a huge improvement on our previous system which we
were tinkering with on a monthly and sometimes weekly basis,”
said Basford.
Through its close relationships with partners and seamless
project management, NTT ICT was able to deliver and implement
the IT project on time and budget.
“NTT ICT had an ongoing interaction with the
team and managed several challenges that arose
during the implementation process. The team at
NTT ICT really found a way around everything –
including the fact that the server room was part
of a construction site during the whole upgrade
process,” said Basford.
St edmund’s IT Journey with NTT ICT | Case Study

4. The next stage…
Soon after completing the initial implementation, St Edmund’s
College decided to purchase a host of solutions from NTT ICT
and is currently looking to upgrade its entire network, including
updates for its existing server software and switches.
NTT ICT continues to be on hand to work directly with the team
to support the new system and deliver new products, as well as
sourcing new technology solutions as required.
“Having an organisation that is able to tap into
the wealth of vendors that exist in the market
is invaluable for our business and has meant
that we have been able to complete this project
with ease. We have a huge level of trust in NTT
ICT, earned through this implementation, which
will stick with us for any future projects for the
school,” said Basford.
About NTT Communications ICT Solutions
NTT Com ICT Solutions (Australia) Pty Ltd is a wholly owned
subsidiary company of NTT Communications, the global data and IP
services arm of Fortune Global 500 telecom leader, Nippon
Telegraph & Telephone Corporation (NTT). The company was
launched in 2013 and comprises of NTT Communications’ Australian
entities NTT Australia, Frontline Systems Australia, and Harbour MSP.
NTT Com ICT Solutions (Australia) Pty Ltd is a fully integrated,
one-stop hub for IT services. The company delivers end-to-end
information and communication technology solutions supported
with professional services, managed services, and ever-ready
technical support working with enterprise-size Australian organisa-
tions that want to re-imagine IT through infrastructure innovation.
Services include a world-class Tier-1 Internet backbone, secure
closed networks, security, system integration, network and ap-
plication management, managed hosting, infrastructure resale, and
global content delivery services. In addition, NTT Com ICT Solutions
is a data centre service provider, specialising in fully integrated
colocation, private cloud, and managed IT services.
www.nttict.com
About St Edmund’s College
St Edmund’s College seeks to provide the best possible education
for our students in an environment which is permeated by con-
sciousness of the presence of God and love for Christ. The College
is located in Mary Street, Woodend, Ipswich and will soon celebrate
50 years “On the Hill”.
The staff at St Edmund’s College are committed to providing out
students with an educational framework suitable to the needs of
boys and men. Our mission is to have our young men resilient and
wise enough to leave us in Year 12, to take their place in a society
that is challenging, demanding and enriching. As well as striving for
academic success in the classroom, it is necessary to develop
emotional and social skills. Students need to feel that they belong to
our community and that they are valued by the St Edmund’s family.
www.sec.qld.edu.au/
St edmund’s IT Journey with NTT ICT | Case Study