Rotterdam University Selects Novell to optimize IT Services

One of the largest institutions of higher education in the Netherlands chooses Novell Open Enterprise Server to support its staff and students across 12 locations

2 August 2012

One of the Netherlands’ largest institutions of higher education, Rotterdam University, selected Novell® Open Enterprise Server 11 and accompanying Novell Cluster Services™, to optimize the performance of its IT infrastructure. With this move, the university can manage its network of 33,000 end users with fewer people, reduce costs and protect the university against potential downtime.

With Open Enterprise Server 11 the university, including its staff and students, now has access to the most advanced file and print services on the latest SUSE® Linux Enterprise platform. As the university grows, Open Enterprise Server 11 will provide a stable environment for the IT administration to easily manage and maintain.

Open Enterprise Server 11 will help the IT department protect the university against downtime and disasters. Novell Cluster Services, an accompanying product with Open Enterprise Server 11, enables the university IT team to provide continuous service to staff and students by seamlessly managing tasks across sixteen interconnected servers in two separate data centers.

“Almost all the office automation runs on these sixteen servers. Thanks to Novell Cluster Services, we can count on permanent availability,” said Eric Kerkdijk, Manager of Infrastructure & Telecom Management at Rotterdam University. “If for whatever reason one of the nodes malfunctions, the corresponding node in the other data center takes over its tasks without causing any interruption - every cluster-enabled service can be taken over by the other data center within a matter of seconds. In this way, Novell Cluster Services makes managing and maintaining the servers very easy.”

The university selected Novell Open Enterprise Server 11 on account of its reliability and efficiency, which significantly lowers any additional maintenance costs. As an example, the university’s 33,000 end users are managed by a mere ten employees, only three of whom are specifically assigned to the Novell environment.

“The university looked into other solutions, but quickly realized that they would have demanded many more resources,” said Kerkdijk. “Now we need only sixteen servers in total. With Novell, we have reliable, proven technology at competitive prices – crucial for an educational institution with a limited budget.”

For more information, including pricing and availability for Novell Open Enterprise Server 11, visit www.novell.com/openenterpriseserver or contact your Novell representative.

About Novell

Novell, Inc. believes that customers should have choice and control of their IT systems. A global software leader to enterprises worldwide, Novell delivers solutions that make people more productive and work environments more secure and manageable. Novell supports thousands of organizations around the world with collaboration, endpoint management, and file and networking technologies, all of which drive end-user productivity directly or on the backend. With solutions including Novell GroupWise, Novell ZENworks and Novell Open Enterprise Server, Novell focuses on today’s mobile, social and multi-platform world to help businesses stay competitive, minimize costs, and get more value from the software they already own. For more information, visit www.novell.com.

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