Portable units can access the network wirelessly, allowing staff visiting small towns once a month to process licence applications with a laptop and camera. There are also 170 emergency call vehicles that use in-vehicle laptops to connect to the network's dispatch system.

Axon implemented VMWare ESX servers and upgraded the entire range of servers from NT 4.0 and Exchange 5.5 to MS Server 2003 and Exchange 2003.

As a full-time operation, AA had previously found it difficult to make maintenance time available. The use of VMWare has largely resolved that because servers can be moved from one physical host to another and be worked on in the middle of the day with no disruption of services.

'Since we've deployed virtualization, it's stopped us buying an endless stream of servers,' Layzell says. 'We've probably saved $2000 a server and our machine room has been tidied up, with much less load on air conditioning.'

Another benefit is the ease of remote management. Layzell lives on Waiheke Island and can drive all the servers from there if necessary.