Virtualisation is a hot topic among NHS IT managers and is being promoted by NHS Connecting for Health, the agency in charge of NHS IT. However, it can be a very hard concept to grasp. If you're a board member, clinician or other non-expert baffled by the pros and cons, start here. By Daloni Carlisle.

An increasing number of NHS trusts are undertaking virtualisation projects. Often, these are to address a specific issue, such as disaster recovery. But many spin-off benefits are being reported. Daloni Carlisle reports.

Sharing patient data with Hitachi's Storage Virtualisation

Critical clinical decisions need to be based on access to the right information at the right time from any location. This is often impossible because, after years of departmental IT purchasing, many hospitals have disparate data silos with no integration.

Hitachi group companies have unparalleled experience providing medical equipment, innovative technology, IT solutions and consultancy services to the healthcare sector.

Hitachi's unique Storage Virtualisation provides a layer of abstraction between hospital applications and underlying storage infrastructures. Data currently residing on different vendor systems can be presented as a single pool without data migration or infrastructure replacement. With such technology in place, the specific storage devices and formats used are no longer an impediment to accessing data.

E-mail: info.emea@hds.com
Tel: +44 (0) 1753 618000 (Mark Clark, director e-health solutions EMEA)
Web: www.hds.com/healthcare

Free virtualisation evaluation from CSA Waverley

For a limited period, CSA Waverley is offering onsite evaluation of a virtualisation demo suite.

This fully mobile unit is fully equipped to let you experience virtualisation on your own site. This offer comes without any risk or cost to your organisation, and will enable you to fully understand how to implement and manage a virtual infrastructure.

This offer includes:

• The latest HP server technology
• VMware licenses
• 1TB SAN
• On-site demonstration delivered by our technical team
• Training in building, testing and deploying virtual servers
• Training in physical to virtual migration
• Demonstration of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
• Extended evaluation of environment for up to 10 days

E-mail: r.boyle@csawaverley.com
Tel: +44 (0) 1628 851 044
Web: www.csawaverley.com/vmdemoreg