In addition to bolstering the resilience of the IT infrastructure, virtualisation has allowed the university to reduce its physical footprint in its two onsite data centres. Reducing the number of racks has saved on space, power and carbon emissions, Grant said.

He added: "Previously it took a lot of man hours to fix the racks. We now have automation [there]."

Grant said that moving to virtualisation was a steep learning curve for him and the 150 staff in the university's IT service department, which meant that staff training was "prevalent" to enable them to overcome the hurdle.