Italtel, in partnership with Cisco, has been awarded a €2.5 million contract by the Telematics and Informatics Advanced Technologies Division of the Ministry of Defense to create a new data center for the Italian Army.
The main objectives of the program are to develop and modernize the Italian Army’s hardware and data network, complete the hardware and software infrastructure of the virtualization/concentration nodes and support the continued operation of such nodes.
By the end of the project, Italtel will have installed a new data center to run homogeneously to the army’s existing data centers network in terms of virtualization and concentration features, thus creating a functional and cutting edge ICT network.
The army’s data center network, which has two main centers in Rome and Padua, supplies IT services to all military bases throughout the Italian territory and has to meet very stringent security and continuity standards due to the highly strategic activity it is used for.
"We are proud to be able to provide our skills and ability to the Italian Army,” said Stefano Pileri, Italtel CEO. "We have always had a deep knowledge of telecommunications networks and we have been able to apply this knowledge to develop leading ICT networks. Being able to enrich the technological equipment of such a significant customer is a source of pride for us and reconfirms Italtel as an established supplier to the Italian Army.”
This project is just the latest stage in the modernization of the Italian Army’s infrastructure, network equipment and computer services. The process, supported by Italtel and Cisco, started a few years ago, with the creation of two new-generation data centers that simplified the technological infrastructure within the Army through the reduction of physical servers and simplification of the network elements.
Following this, the project was integrated with the creation of eleven other ‘mini data centers’, distributed throughout the country. As a result, the Italian Army now has the benefits of cloud computing, including the strengthening and virtualization of computer applications while also ensuring the needs of network reliability and security of data.