The High Judicial Council (HJC; Conselho Superior da Magistratura) is the Portuguese State entity responsible for appointing, assigning, transferring, promoting, and taking disciplinary action in respect of Judges of the Judicial Courts. At the same time, this body works as an institutional safeguard of Judges and their independence.
HJC’s biggest challenge was the administrative management of its approximately 100 employees and the coordination of the 1500+ judges at a national level. “This represents all the personal data and individual files, as well as human resources proceedings (non-judicial). Every piece of information is stored in our technological infrastructure.” Vítor Fernandes, IT Officer at the High Judicial Council, explains.
Being a judicial management entity, HJC previously had its technological infrastructure entirely dependent on the Ministry of Justice, and there should be a separation. “Part of the data was hosted in the server of the Ministry of Justice. The remaining data was kept by HJC, but in physical servers: completely obsolete, slow and with communication failures. Therefore, the start of the Technological Independence project was crucial to us.”
We have been pleasantly surprised with Nutanix. In the past, a lot of time was required to develop a specific action. Due to the server virtualization, effortless server creation and optimization of new projects, the same task now takes approximately half of the time. We’ve witnessed major improvements in our performance.
After the decision to modernize the technological infrastructure, the High Judicial Council, as a public administration entity, conducted a survey to assess needs and requirements. After that process, the tender was open to the public and Nutanix presented the best proposal”, discloses the IT Officer at the High judicial Council.
“Then, we created an infrastructure, which generated the need to get new servers. The goal was to tackle the shortcomings we were experiencing so far, as well as the requirements we predict for the next two years”, Vítor Fernandes added.
As a solution to these needs, the HJC choose Nutanix’s hyperconverged solution to enable the virtualization of servers, the migration to Nutanix AHV Hypervisor, as well as the aggregated backup solution Veeam, and the corresponding Nutanix Mine cluster to host these backups.
Vítor Fernandes adds that “Nutanix’s solutions enabled the merging of the whole infrastructure’s management, in three nodes, in a single platform. With server virtualization, we can also optimize the infrastructure of our Human Resources. The effortless server creation, as well as the optimization of new projects, are two key features that we have considered to be fundamental”.
The HJC’s IT Officer also stated that the “ease of implementation and scaling, in the event of a resources increase and a growing need of new necessary nodes, was a differentiating factor.”
Vítor Fernandes highlighted that one of the main advantages of Nutanix’s technology is the fast and efficient data processing. “In the past, a certain amount of time was required to develop a specific action. Due to the server virtualization, effortless server creation and optimization of new projects, the same task takes now approximately half of the time. We witnessed major improvements in our performance.”
“Now, once the judge enters the platform, there’s automatic and quick access to all the required documentation, which translates into an increase of a flawless communication flow. This is a differentiating factor”.
Apart from the modernization of infrastructure and the outstanding improvements in data processing and performance, Vítor Fernandes highlights the environmental impact: “Here at the HJC, we promote a sustainable policy. So, the three nodes, which in the end are three servers that aggregate all the others, have a positive impact when it comes to energy consumption. The hyperconvergent solution enables a steep reduction of the number of connected devices, thus contributing to the decrease of the carbon footprint.”
Giving continuity to this modernization of the institution, the High Judicial Council is considering the subscription of the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) service, considering the changes in the current work models.
“This will be a plan for 2024. Envisioning the next two years, we currently consider that all of our needs are being met. However, there is always the possibility of new projects coming up”, Vítor Fernandes states, as the IT Officer in the High Judicial Council.