Brent Council has outlined a new multi-million-pound data center upgrade plan.

The council has approved spending £3.8 million ($5.3 million) on data center improvement over the next four years to create a more modern and resilient IT system.

The upgrades are part of the UK council’s new £10.3 million ($14.4 million) capital IT investment plans, revealed this week and due to run up to 2024.

The upgrades include replacing legacy backup solutions and utilizing disaster recovery as a service, upgrading physical storage and virtualization infrastructure to a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution, upgrading bandwidth capacity to 10 Gbps, replacing Microsoft Windows Server operating systems as they reach end of life, a number of network and switch upgrades, and data center consolidation and moving towards cloud solutions where possible.

Labour Councillor Margaret McLennan, deputy leader of Brent Council, said the updates are essential given the role IT plays in the day-to-day running of the council.

“This will allow staff to continue to work efficiently and effectively in a secure environment,” she said.

The proposals include spending £1.4 million ($2m) in the year 2021-2022, £1 million ($1.4m) a year for the following two years, and £400,000 ($558,000) in 2024-2025. The proposals also include spending an additional £1.2 million on a campus network refresh and £1.1 million ($1.5m) on cybersecurity upgrades.

The report said upgrades would reduce costs – especially those around maintaining older equipment – improve the user experience, and improve security.