Slough BC has signed up for a further five years in partnership with IT consultant, Unisys, to move to virtualised technology. The Berkshire council hopes the continued alliance will help the council adopt a virtualised approach to its data centre management, making it one of the first local authorities to implement the technology. Virtualisation means organisations can streamline their IT infrastructure by turning a single server into multiple virtual servers. For Slough, this has meant it has already reduced its number of servers from 150 to 80, and cut the number of applications it runs from 420 to 300. The council's director of resources, Andrew Blake-Herbert, said: ‘We have already seen multiple benefits of our close partnership with Unisys – through our move to virtualisation which has led to better delivery of services, reduced costs and a more resilient infrastructure. ‘Consolidating our servers and the number of desktops will enable us to move forward with some pioneering business initiatives which will put us in the best position to deliver unrivalled service in the face of tightening budgets.'