The Together Housing group claims its move to VMware-powered back-up systems will save it around £70,000 a year in technology and consulting fees.

The housing association has become one of the largest in the North of England, following the merger of six existing housing groups, and manages around 35,000 properties, reports computerworlduk.com.

Together Housing's challenge has been to unify its existing legacy systems - made up of part VMware, Microsoft Hyper V and Citrix - into one complete, robust solution.

It chose to adopt a 100 per cent virtualised environment, capable of handling its 1,500 IT users, split across dozens of locations, because of its perceived low-cost and flexibility.

"By providing all of the capabilities we need in one easy-to-use package we have saved at least £20,000 per year on our legacy back-up tools, as well as £50,000 on our back-up and recovery provider, since we can now provide all these functions in-house," said Lee Richardson, systems engineer at Together Housing.

As well as saving money, the organisation has halved data-back up windows to just seven hours, and slashed recovery times by over 80 per cent.

"We can also recover individual files, rather than entire machines, giving greater flexibility in data protection," Richardson explained further on computerweekly.com.

All this means that Together Housing can offer a more consistent service to its customers, whilst also satisfying auditors over its data protection processes, he added.