People’s Majlis, the main legislative body for the Republic of Maldives islands, operates in a distributed environment. To connect with their 500,000+ constituents for support and feedback, they adopted HPE Solutions for Qumulo File Data Platform to maintain 100% government transparency and indefinite file archiving.
Officials engage constituents through live streaming, file archiving
The People’s Majlis(Parliament of Maldives) presides over the nearly half-million residents of the Maldives islands and is made up of 87 elected members. With a largely dispersed population, maintaining consistent communication and visibility with meetings and committee sessions is critical—especially when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and daily activities such as elections and legislation continued.
They used YouTube to distribute their video feed to local television stations for resident viewing. But shifting to virtual operations, they needed a more sophisticated arrangement to livestream proceedings in full, high-definition video online and across social channels. Constituents needed the reassurance that their government was operating in near-normal capacity.
“If Parliament members have new initiatives or projects, we must be ready for them with the right technology.” – Ibrahim Yashau, Senior Information and Communications Technology Officer, Parliament of Maldives
Unique requirements for fast file retrieval and indefinite archiving
Their previous solution couldn’t match the volume and performance requirements for fast file retrieval and indefinite archiving, which is a mandate by law. With unique requirements, according to Yashau, and an objectives-based approach to procure IT solutions, People’s Majlis did their “homework.”
“Our requirements are unique, so we do our own research … We wanted something that could scale and grow with our needs,” explained Yashau.
That resulted in a comprehensive evaluation of various enterprise data storage solutions and ultimately choosing the HPE Apollo and Qumulo File Data Platform. The combined solution, featuring 293 terabytes of usable capacity, met the government’s budget parameters, too. Within two hours, installation was complete and their cluster was serving files to elected officials and government employees, making it a painless process. Thanks to the solution’s ease of use and cost-effectiveness, HPE and Qumulo helped People’s Majlis be fiscally-responsible stewards as tourism rebounded and the region recovered from the pandemic’s economic impact.
“I trust them with my storage. The solution—from start until now—is a big success.”
Objectives-based outcomes:
A stable IT foundation for 120+ terabytes and 122 years of data
Operating in a very remote environment without a strong supply chain or HPE warehouses nearby, it was essential to have support from Qumulo and Focus Computers, a local HPE partner. That made installation, integration, and any patching painless. Subsequent outcomes for People’s Majlis and their IT team include:
- Time savings that partially stem from a nearly 100% reduction in help desk calls
- “Quality-of-life improvements” from ease of employing user roles, having default network options, and out-of-box installation
- Direct analytics to gauge performance and capacity
- Streamlined, scalable storage administration that helps Yashau turn attention to the strategic technology goals
Real-Time Analytics Demonstration with Qumulo
A Highly Compliant, Cost-Efficient Active Archive Storage Solution
“Every single thing we do from videos, audio files, documents, each email, letter or request, and a file archive dating back to the early 1900s is on HPE Apollo and Qumulo,” stresses Yashau.
In total, it’s 120 terabytes and growing of data and digital files that will remain as active storage indefinitely. Even with growing government data requirements, they’re confident in the infrastructure both now and for the future.
There’s little-to-no concern that they’ll have storage downtime, which employees, legal officers, and Parliament members can’t afford as they work on tight deadlines, sometimes around the clock, to serve taxpayers. In fact, they have nearly 100% uptime on all systems with scalability that matches any requirement they’ll ever need. Now, IT staff can also concentrate on new initiatives that may be necessary as the country normalizes.
“Our users don’t have to waste time trying to access large data files to do their work. That means they can reach out to the people more and faster.”
Learn more about the powerful combination of HPE solutions for Qumulo file data storage to support expanding capacity and performance needs, on-premise or in the cloud. The full HPE and Qumulo joint case study on People’s Majlis is available here.
