Qirx helps digitise AIATSIS artefacts

Qirx has deployed hyperconverged infrastructure to Australia’s largest collector of First Nation’s artefacts to help digitise more than one million items of historical and spiritual significance. 

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Studies’ (AIATSIS) tier III data centre lacked the processing power needed to meet a 2025 deadline for preserving audiovisual archives online. 

Globally, the industry consensus is that most tape that is not preserved in the next two years will be lost forever because it will deterorate and the expert knowledge and machinery needed to digitise it is becoming rarer. 

Much of the federal agency’s collection, such as works by First Nations artists, film-makers and storytellers, is stored in magnetic media.

According to AIATSIS deputy CIO Syed Jaffary digitising it on time  “all comes down to the power within our IT environment.”

 “Timely, digitised access to the resources in the AIATSIS collection makes it easier for First Nations communities to access that material and helps in bringing knowledge of the planet’s oldest living cultures before a much wider audience,” Jaffary said.

Qirx general manager of sales Justin Gilmore told CRN Australia that the MSP supported AIATSIS extend the performance of its Canberra-based, core data centre to remote edge locations. 

“They now have the infrastructure to digitise those artefacts at these remote locations, when previously they had to either drive to the locations or the locations had to send the information,” Gilmore said. 

Gilmore said that first Qirx recommended AIATSIS replace its “very manual and outdated hypervisor,” with Nutanix AVH.

After installing the hyperconverged virtualisation platform Qirx were “then able to install Nutanix Kubernetes engine into the environment, which then assisted them with being able to run containers within their cloud environment,” Gilmore added. 

The bolstered computing power enabled AIATSIS to analyse and transmit much larger volumes of data and also to remotely manage edge applications from its Canberra headquarters using Nutanix’s control management system prism.

“I think one of the things that I was really excited about with this project was digitising our country's history."

"And not losing it. it's either been damaged or lost, and once it's digitised it's there forever", Gilmore said.

Qirx is a champion reseller for Nutanix. It deployed the vendor's technology at Canberra’s Marist College in November last year. 

Gilmore said, “we’ve been deploying Nutanix for approximately 10 years. And we've got about 45 customers ranging from top tier federal government agencies to mid to low tier education, and nonprofit and corporate within Canberra and New South Wales.”