The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) will deploy a document management system to allow its 1600 staff to search more than 6.3Tbs of internal data and 1.2Tbs of emails across its complex grid storage and virtualised server networks.
The bureau provides weather and ocean surveillance, forecasts and warning services across 75 offices located in all Australian territories, including Antarctica, and uses shared storage and super-computer facilities with the CSIRO. Its 100-plus remote observation centres will be excluded from the document management system.
According to Bureau documents, the management system will provide a “single source of truth” for internal data, will capture 90 per cent of inscope records, and replace a mix of manual data entry and storage processes.
Data is presently stored across a mix of public and private drives, and is entered through a mix of document processing applications.
A pilot of the system will be completed in the BOM’s 400-seat Climate and Water Division by May, before it is deployed across the whole organisation by first quarter 2012.
The system’s workflow and document management will integrate with an upcoming Microsoft SharePoint deployment and SAP, and will be extended within two years to allow staff remote secure access from a fleet of mobile phones and tablets over Microsoft Forefront. It will also be extended to utilise Web 2.0 functionality and interoperate with platforms including the Bureau’s customer relationship management and web content management systems.
“The project seeks to implement a solution to address records management compliance issues and to achieve efficiencies in accessing business records documents in shared private drives, such as reports, correspondence, and presentations email, and its attachments,” Bureau documents read.
The BOM has moved to simply and strength its IT infrastructure, including a roll out of VMware in its data centres, and new redundancy links and bandwidth increases to its internal WeatherNet forecasting network. The Bureau’s Melbourne and Canberra head offices now run on 300Mbps links and Perth operates on 200Mbps, while many links to regional offices across the country have been increased from around 512Kbps to between 10Mbps and 20Mpbs.
It is also upgrading its Sun Systems multi-tier Large Scale Data Storage System. The array includes “expensive” enterprise class mission critical storage, SATA disk arrays and tape drives such as LTO and SUN/STK T10000, and uses predominantly Oracle software, with integration with Microsoft SQL Server. The document management system will need to automatically migrate data to cheaper storage disks as data ages and the likelihood of reference declines.