News Release

Brisbane Airport Corporation Selects Cisco, EMC and VMware to Virtualize the Data Center for Increased Business Agility and Streamlined Operations

SYDNEY, Australia – July 31, 2012 – Brisbane Airport
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Jul 30, 2012

SYDNEY, Australia – July 31, 2012 – Brisbane Airport Corporation (BAC), the operator and developer of Brisbane Airport, which facilitates the movement of more than 21 million passengers and tons of freight each year, has selected innovative virtualization technology from Cisco, EMC and VMware to help achieve its information and communications technology (ICT) strategy to improve business agility and airport operational effectiveness. 

Today, Brisbane Airport is one of the premier aviation hubs in Asia Pacific servicing more than 21 million passengers, 420 businesses, 20,000 workers located at the airport, 27 airlines, the community and government.  In the future, BAC's strategic vision is to transform Brisbane Airport into a major commercial center for business and leisure that supports the economic and cultural growth of Brisbane and Queensland, and acknowledges the important role it plays in Brisbane's transformation into a new world city.

"To achieve our vision, Brisbane Airport requires a highly available and resilient data center infrastructure platform that will scale to support our future expansion. The selection of Cisco, EMC and VMware helps fulfill this requirement while also providing us with the business agility to create and rapidly deliver new services to the business," said Stephen Tukavkin, technology manager, Brisbane Airport Corporation.

BAC selected Corpnet, recently acquired by Logicalis, to deploy a private cloud built on the Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS®), Cisco Nexus® switches, EMC VNX storage system and VMware vSphere server virtualization software to support it as follows:

  • Increased Agility and Scale in the Data Center to Align with Business Growth.  BAC's information technology (IT) organization combined its networking, computing, storage and server virtualization in a private cloud for rapid provision of new services and applications to the business with Cisco UCS. BAC IT already provides simple and convenient Cisco® Wi-Fi access to passengers in the domestic and international terminals, businesses in the retail precinct, and employees and contractors in the aviation and maintenance hubs which may be extended as a platform for new service delivery that helps improve convenience and productivity at Brisbane Airport.  Even with BAC's future infrastructure commitments, including a new parallel runway and upgrading terminals, and increased freight operations, the Cisco, EMC and VMware system can meet the most demanding performance and scalability demands.
  • Reduced Data Centre Carbon Footprint and Cooling Costs. By centralizing and virtualizing different projects and applications to create virtual network resources, BAC expects to reduce its energy consumption and cooling costs by approximately 20 percent.  Since BAC began virtualizing with VMware ESX 3.5, approximately 80 percent of its environment has been reduced which is estimated to reflect the removal of 70 physical servers from operation. 
  • New Levels of Operational Efficiency.  By streamlining operations and providing a "single pane of glass" with Cisco UCS Manager for automated, policy-based management, BAC reduces its risk and improves operational agility and scalability.  These efficiencies have helped increase BAC IT staff productivity, freeing staff to focus more on strategic, business-critical initiatives. With airport business operations absolutely critical, the platform is planned and designed with 99.999 percent availability with site recovery across data centers. 

"Having worked closely with the BAC team over a number of years, Corpnet (recently acquired by Logicalis), understood both the technology and business challenges facing BAC. The design and integration of leading technologies from Cisco, EMC and VMware provided the perfect combination of agility, technology and enablement to meet the requirements for BAC today and well into the future," said Jonathan Pannell, Enterprise Solution Specialist, Logicalis Queensland.

EMC's VNX 5300 storage solution is specifically designed for virtualised environments such as Brisbane Airport Corporation. Incorporating FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering) Technology EMC VNX arrays move high-performance - or "hot"- data to enterprise Flash drives to improve application and storage system performance and moves less active data to lower storage tiers to reduce costs. In addition to performance and cost benefits, FAST delivers heightened levels of efficiency, including lowering power and cooling expenses, while dramatically improving and lowering operating expenses.

"For Brisbane Airport Corporation, this results in a low-risk storage environment, coupled with predictable performance, vital in a virtualized desk-top environment," said Darren McCullum, VCE, VMware and Cisco Technology Alliance Manager.

"It's always exciting for us to work with our customers and partners, to help transform their business, achieving greater agility and efficiency, and ultimately realizing significant power reduction and the resultant positive environmental impact for which our technology is world renowned," said Duncan Bennt, VP, VMware, ANZ.

"Like many other enterprises, airports must provide the highest availability of operations while offering maximum flexibility to accommodate the ever changing needs of their business environment.  Cisco is pleased that Brisbane Airport Corporation has selected the scalable and easy to manage Cisco Unified Computing System to provide it with more flexibility and greater agility as it expands to achieve its ‘Airport City' vision," said Mr. Courtney Dodds, the data center portfolio manager for Cisco Australia and New Zealand.

Technorati Tags: Brisbane Airport, Cisco, Corpnet, EMC, VMware, data centre, virtualisation, Cisco Unified Computing System, green

About Brisbane Airport Corporation

Brisbane Airport is the third largest airport in Australia on passenger numbers and operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is Australia's largest capital city airport (by land size) and has two major terminals providing services to 27 airlines flying to 45 national and 30 international destinations.  In FY12, Brisbane Airport welcomed more than 21 million passengers through its facilities.

About Cisco

Cisco, (NASDAQ: CSCO), is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com.au. For ongoing news from Australia and New Zealand, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com/anz.

About Corpnet (now Logicalis)

Headquartered in the UK, Logicalis is an international provider of integrated information and communications technology (ICT) solutions and services founded on a superior breadth of knowledge and expertise in communications and collaboration; data centre; and professional and managed services. Logicalis Australia has offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane – the acquisition of Corpnet gives Logicalis significantly increased presence in the Queensland market and demonstrates their commitment to being the IT infrastructure provider of choice in Queensland, Australia.

About EMC

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world's leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and create value from their information.  Information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.

About VMware

VMware is the leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable businesses to thrive in the Cloud Era. Customers rely on VMware to help them transform the way they build, deliver and consume Information Technology resources in a manner that is evolutionary and based on their specific needs. With 2011 revenues of $3.77 billion, VMware has more than 350,000 customers and 50,000 partners.? The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com.

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