VMware vCloud Director Helps NDI Speed Technology Delivery Within Efforts that Support Democracy

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• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing

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The National Democratic Institute (NDI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based in Washington, D.C., works in every region of the world to strengthen democratic institutions, safeguard elections, advance citizen engagement, and support open and accountable government. In many countries where it operates, the IT infrastructure is anything but robust. Many groups in those countries have limited technical and financial resources to develop and sustain necessary IT assets. NDI can often provide them with that technology—but it needs to do so not just in a cost-effective way, but in ways that give their in-country partners the knowledge to manage their own programs after NDI has stopped providing technical assistance. NDI has piloted a VMware vCloud Director implementation coupled with access to Bluelock Virtual Datacenters hosted in the public cloud. Spence turned to Bluelock, one of the VMware vCloud Datacenter Services providers, for their expertise as they are an award-winning provider of cloud hosting solutions for the enterprise. Hosted in the public cloud, Bluelock Virtual Datacenters help companies get started quickly and deal with the unknown, while retaining the flexibility to adjust IT resources as their needs evolve.

The National Democratic Institute (NDI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based in Washington, D.C. that works in every region of the world to strengthen democratic institutions, safeguard elections, advance citizen engagement, and support open and accountable government. In many countries where it operates, the IT infrastructure is anything but robust. Many groups in those countries have limited technical and financial resources to develop and sustain necessary IT assets. NDI can often provide them with that technology—but it needs to do so not just in a cost-effective way, but in ways that give their in-country partners the knowledge to manage their own programs after NDI has stopped providing technical assistance. NDI works with groups in about 70 countries, including political parties, civic groups, parliaments and other organizations. They need technology for a wide range of activities from tracking legislation, to monitoring elections and running “get out the vote” campaigns.

NDI has piloted a VMware vCloud Director implementation coupled with access to Bluelock Virtual Datacenters hosted in the public cloud. Spence turned to Bluelock, one of the VMware vCloud Datacenter Services providers, for their expertise as they are an award-winning provider of cloud hosting solutions for the enterprise. Hosted in the public cloud, Bluelock Virtual Datacenters help companies get started quickly and deal with the unknown, while retaining the flexibility to adjust IT resources as their needs evolve. The Institute is using VMware vCloud Director and Bluelock Virtual Datacenters to streamline and automate the provisioning of virtual machines on behalf of its user communities. The foundation of the initiative is a Virtual Datacenter platform—a technology familiar to NDI. The Institute is currently implementing a VMware vSphere virtualized environment for its internal server infrastructure. It is also replacing its Microsoft Exchange email system with a cloud-based Google Mail solution.

• New virtual environments can be provisioned in minutes
• Stable, secure environments
• Cost to host environments minimized with use of an enterprise-class public cloud

• Reduced server footprint by over half, from 25 to fewer than 10
• Anticipated at least a 25-30% reduction in power and cooling costs
• Saved NDI engineers approximately eight hours per deployment