TechColumbus names OARnet 'Innovation Award' semifinalist

Dec 15, 2009
 
 

Columbus, Ohio  (December 15, 2009) -TechColumbus recently announced that the Ohio Academic Resources Network (OARnet) is a semifinalist for the 2009 TechColumbus Innovation Awards, to be presented February 4, 2010.


The annual Innovation Awards “recognize outstanding achievements in technology leadership and innovation,” said TechColumbus’ website. “From hundreds of entries, 13 outstanding leaders and teams who exemplify the best in technology leadership and innovation in 2009 will be honored.”

OARnet, nominated in the Innovation in Non-Profit Service Delivery category, has been coordinating the promotion of virtualization software designed to save potentially more than $130 million over three years. The statewide program is a Green IT initiative that allows certain organizations to purchase a wide spectrum of virtualization software products, maintenance contracts and additional services in an effort to reduce server hardware, save space, decrease power consumption and redirect personnel.

These virtualization products also can be leveraged to assist organizations with disaster recovery. In the education environment, the software can be used to streamline updates in computer lab machines or allow users to access specific applications from any computer.

A majority of client organizations now are successfully virtualizing their IT environments, following the promotional efforts of OARnet’s Client Services team. The team also partnered with a training corporation to offer clients economical training and certification classes to assist them with implementation.

The University System of Ohio and OARnet have partnered with Vmware to distribute and license virtualization solutions to colleges and universities, state and local government, and healthcare facilities. Over the years, OARnet has built the foundation to support these types of programs, with the development of a network backbone of more than 1,850 miles of optical fiber controlled by one of the most advanced optical switching systems in the nation.

More Information: http://venturenext.org/2009semifinalists.html

The Ohio Academic Resources Network (OARnet) was established by the Ohio Board of Regents in 1987 to provide researchers with access to the computational resources of the Ohio Supercomputer Center. Today. OARnet provides Ohio’s colleges and universities and their research partners with an integrated technology infrastructure that includes unrivaled intrastate network connectivity and shared services. OARnet specializes in providing custom solutions, whether providing virtualization resources, spanning the globe by videoconference or providing 24/7 network support. For more information, visit http://www.oar.net.

 

 

 

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