Private cloud transformation to cut annual virtualisation licensing costs by up to 70% and halve server footprint, supporting the college’s next stage of digital services

In this article:

• Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) targets saving AU$2.1 million over five years and up to 21,000 kWh annually
• Project migration finishes ahead of licensing renewal with no interruption to RACS's members

HPE (NYSE: HPE) today announced that the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) has moved its remaining on-premises workloads to HPE Private Cloud. The move is part of a strategic technology transformation to improve technical capacity, simplify operations and manage long-term IT expenditure with HPE Private Cloud managed through the GreenLake cloud platform.

The new HPE Private Cloud PC3000 environment has reduced RACS’s annual virtualisation licensing costs by up to 70% and halved its physical server count from eight to four, with estimated annual energy savings of up to 21,000 kWh. Across its on-premises environment and disaster recovery site, the college expects to save about AU$2.1 million over five years as its technology roadmap progresses.

For the not-for-profit organisation, these efficiencies support its mission to train, educate and admit surgeons to fellowship across Australia and New Zealand. By reducing the resources required to run core infrastructure, RACS aims to direct more of its technology capacity towards improving the experience of members and trainees.

Aligning infrastructure with a changing technology estate

RACS began evaluating alternatives after changes to its virtualisation licensing increased its proposed renewal cost by approximately 300% and required a three-year upfront payment. By modernising its ageing infrastructure, RACS improved performance and reduced its hardware footprint, core count, and licensing costs.

RACS selected GreenLake for its platform maturity, scalability, cost efficiency, cloud-like management and HPE support. The new PC3000 environment is a turnkey infrastructure solution that combines HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, HPE ProLiant Compute DL360 Gen12 Servers, and HPE Networking switches. Deduplication delivered 2:1 data reduction, bringing the storage volume down from 70 TB to approximately 35 TB.

RACS also retired redundant development environments, reducing the number of systems its team must patch, maintain, and secure. Its broader roadmap includes disaster recovery optimisation and more cost-effective cloud storage tiers, with the potential to reduce ongoing hosting and infrastructure costs and contribute further savings.

“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.”

Modernising without interrupting member services

The migration, facilitated by HPE Services and Champions of Change, was completed without disruption for members. Continuity is essential for RACS’s high-stakes surgical examinations, with examination systems monitored in real time during exam periods. HPE Private Cloud also supports systems that record surgical training activity and information required for the college’s audit and accreditation responsibilities.

“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.”

Champions of Change worked closely with RACS and HPE to evaluate market options and develop a detailed strategy and fully validated technical recommendation for the right-sized environment. The migration was delivered on schedule ahead of the licensing renewal.

“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.”

A flexible foundation for the next stage of digital services

RACS is developing its approach to AI and other digital services that reduce friction for members. GreenLake gives the college a locally managed infrastructure option as it considers where future workloads should run, subject to governance, security and approval requirements.

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