Case Study: Idaho County Courthouse- Central Data Repository

How effective archiving transformed a courthouse into a customer-service hub

About the customer

County governments are responsible for storing and processing vast amounts of courtroom-related data every day. An Idaho county sought help from S1 in overhauling its system for storing data. Until 2002, the county’s personnel and their vast stores of data were spread out among many locations across the county. Files were shuttled by courier between locations, and the lack of a consolidated repository for data made it extremely difficult to access stored information in a timely fashion.

Customer Situation

The county’s data archive was a bottleneck. A single system held all the data for every courtroom in the county. Data from that system was archived to a single tape, which was time-consuming and difficult to access. The existing system for accessing archived information was too slow and complicated for attorneys, press and the public. It also created unnecessary work for county employees, who needed to provide significant levels of assistance each time a data request was made.

When funding came through for a new county courthouse, the IT director saw a critical opportunity to update the county’s entire IT infrastructure. With nearly all county personnel employees finally coming together under one roof, it made sense to bring all the data into a consolidated storage area network.

S1 Solution

The county partnered with S1 to develop a streamlined central repository for all its data. The new system uses a combination of storage media: disks for information that’s accessed often, and tape for archived material.

S1 used Tivoli back-up software, IBM pSeries Unix Servers, IBM 3494 Tape Library, IBM 2109 SAN Fabric, IBM Enterprise Storage Server (Shark), IBM Content Management Software, IBM High-Availability Software (HACMP) and a scaled-down version of all of these items for their disaster recovery site.

Tapes are now stored so they’re totally accessible. With such an efficient new storage area network, data can be conveniently accessed from a variety of computers, without assistance from a county employee. Attorneys can now easily access recorded voice transcripts from cases heard in the new courthouse. In the future, the county plans to archive video of court cases using the robust new storage area network.

County benefits

S1 helped the Idaho county operate more efficiently, store its data more reliably, and improve customer service at the same time. Its new storage area network ensures that the county’s data is secure and accessible, while allowing for future growth.

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