RACS cuts virtualisation costs with HPE Private Cloud

The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons has moved its remaining on-premises workloads to HPE Private Cloud in a shift expected to cut annual virtualisation licensing costs by up to 70%.

The not-for-profit college began reviewing its infrastructure after facing a proposed 300% rise in virtualisation licensing costs and a requirement to pay three years upfront. It completed the migration before its renewal deadline, with no disruption to member services.

RACS expects the project to save about AUD $2.1 million over five years across its on-premises estate and disaster recovery site as its broader technology roadmap develops. The new environment has also halved its physical server count from eight to four, while estimated annual energy savings are up to 21,000 kWh.

For an organisation responsible for training, educating and admitting surgeons to fellowship across Australia and New Zealand, continuity was critical. Systems used for surgical examinations and training records remained available throughout the migration, according to the organisations involved.

Cost pressure

The licensing changes prompted RACS to examine alternatives to its existing setup while modernising ageing infrastructure. The review focused on managing long-term IT spending, simplifying operations and improving technical capacity.

The new environment uses HPE Private Cloud managed through the GreenLake platform. The installation includes HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, HPE ProLiant Compute DL360 Gen12 Servers and HPE Networking switches.

Storage efficiency was also part of the overhaul. Deduplication reduced data volumes from 70 TB to about 35 TB, while redundant development environments were retired, reducing the number of systems requiring patching, maintenance and security oversight.

"By the end of the five-year term, we expect to save about AU$2.1 million across our on-premises environment and disaster recovery site," said Andreas Diamanti, Chief Information Officer, Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.

"The new environment gives us the scalability and cost efficiency we need, with a cloud-like experience that is easier for our team to manage. By spending less time and money maintaining infrastructure, we can focus more of our resources on improving the experience for our members," Diamanti said.

Assessment process

Champions of Change worked with RACS and HPE on the evaluation and migration. The advisory firm spent hundreds of hours reviewing the market, analysing options and testing them against the college's technology, security, compliance and commercial requirements.

"Our role was to give RACS confidence that the decision was based on a rigorous assessment of what would best serve the organisation over the long term," said Alex Danobrega, Account Director, Champions of Change.

"We invested hundreds of hours researching the market, analysing the options and testing them against RACS's technology, security, compliance and commercial requirements. HPE emerged as the clear choice. The breadth across compute, storage and networking, together with GreenLake, provides RACS with a comprehensive platform," Danobrega said.

HPE Services and Champions of Change delivered the migration on schedule ahead of the licensing renewal. That timing mattered because of the operational demands tied to high-stakes surgical examinations, where examination systems are monitored in real time during exam periods.

Broader roadmap

The project forms part of a wider infrastructure plan at the college. RACS is also considering disaster recovery optimisation and lower-cost cloud storage tiers to reduce ongoing hosting and infrastructure costs further.

The college is also developing its approach to artificial intelligence and other digital services intended to reduce friction for members. The new infrastructure gives it a locally managed option as it considers where future workloads should run, subject to governance, security and approval requirements.

HPE's regional leadership framed the project as a modernisation effort tied to service delivery rather than a straightforward hardware refresh.

"RACS has made a deliberate choice to modernise around the needs of its members, not simply replace ageing infrastructure," said Chris Weber, Vice President and Managing Director, South Pacific, HPE.

"Working with Champions of Change, we helped the college turn a complex technology decision into a carefully planned transformation, delivered without disrupting the services its community relies on. By reducing the cost and effort of running core systems while retaining room to grow, RACS creates more capacity to invest in the digital experiences that support surgeons throughout their careers," Weber said.