British Transport Police (BTP), the national police force for British Railways, has deployed a Dell Fluid Data offering, which automatically sorts, classifies and stores information in the right place.

The Dell Compellent Storage is combined with VMware to provide the force with on-demand access to intelligence and command data, thereby helping officers protect more than six million daily passengers.

The Dell offering is expected to meet the requirement of BTP, which relies on high volumes of data generated by the force’s specialist applications, such as Command Control, Crime Reporting and Intelligence, as well as data from case details and other intelligence analysis.

BTP launched the enterprise-wide virtualisation initiative, replacing physical servers and out-of-capacity attached storage with the beginnings of a completely virtualised infrastructure, to provide fast, on-demand access to this data from its 148 sites.

BTP deployed Dell Fluid Data Architecture that enables BTP to scale on a single platform and handle growth requirements easily without the need for ‘rip and replace’ upgrades.

About 95% of BTP’s least-active data has been migrated by storage automation to SATA drives.

One Dell Compellent SAN located at BTP’s primary data centre in Camden, London host the consolidated data of 148 sites, which is again replicated using Dell Compellent Remote Instant Replay to a second Dell Compellent SAN in Birmingham for disaster recovery.

BTP assistant technology manager of Infrastructure Philip Clifton said their IT infrastructure is going through a huge transformation, and they cannot afford missteps in protecting passenger safety.

"We need to access the right data, right at the moment we need it, right at the location we need it. The Fluid Data storage solution provided us with an open architecture that maximises our virtualisation strategy," Clifton said.

Dell VP & GM of Public Sector, EMEA, Troy West said by selecting a Dell Compellent storage system, BTP has admirably used public tax funds to purchase technology with a ROI in less than one year.

"BTP has also replicated its data from 148 sites for disaster recovery purposes without any additional overhead or costs beyond the initial investment," West said.