Case Studies

The quest for value

Atanu Kumar Das examines four deployments of Infrastructure Management (IM) solutions in the country and casts some light on why organisations implement IM and what their payoffs are

HLL leverages value from IT

HP's OpenView has helped in making the working processes smooth and seamless, and helped standardise the IT service delivery procedures K G Mohan Vice President-Information Technology, HLL

HLL’s IT services’ constant endeavour has been to bring best-of-breed business solutions, value and benefits across the company’s operations. Its goal was to use IT support processes and standards to ensure desired availability and service levels among end-users. “Earlier, we had a decentralised IT infrastructure management set-up which had its own support staff, and several local vendors providing IT support services,” says Susheel Navnale, head, IT Infrastructure at HLL. “There were multiple contracts with multiple vendors. This non-integrated approach resulted in the duplication and wastage of resources, limited service levels and lack of coordination. Accountability was also a key problem.”

As a result, a few critical problems remained unresolved. HLL was going in for an IT overhaul that involved, among other things, supply chain optimisation, data warehousing, customer management, and overall consolidation of IT infrastructure in the company. The need of the hour was centralisation and standardisation of IT service delivery procedures.

The new thrust on ensuring availability, reliability and security of its IT infrastructure to near 100 percent was imperative for HLL. Consolidation and centralisation meant that the entire infrastructure had to be perfect and, the system, foolproof. HLL was also looking at implementing IT Infrastructural Library (ITIL)-based service management process and tools. It planned to reduce costs by avoiding duplication. The logistics are enormous—more than 4,500 computer terminals and servers scattered across the country!

Thousands of terminals, hundreds of locations

In HLL’s case, what was unique was the reach. It had about 200 locations in India. It was important to track every little detail at each of these offices. A request for information was given to nine large vendors. This list was trimmed to four in the second round, and later to two in the final round. HP’s OpenView was finally picked.

Once HP OpenView was identified as the successful bidder for the contract worth $10 million over five years, HP engineers discussed the specifics of the solution with the HLL management.

Once the contract was awarded to HP, the tools to be implemented and their benefits were discussed at length. One of the points that emerged was that the tool had to be of international standards and proven. HP’s international exposure stood it in good stead.

Standardising IT delivery processes

According to K G Mohan, vice president-Information Technology, HLL, “HP OpenView has helped HLL meet its main objective, of making the working processes smooth and seamless, and it has helped standardise the IT service delivery procedures. The ITIL/ITSM (IT Service Management)-compliant tools, processes and the approach of HP made the difference for HLL. HP OpenView provided a flexible and reliable IT infrastructure, besides offering cost-effective solutions and services.”

Boosting HSS’s growth

Hughes Software Systems (HSS) offers outsourcing services to its clients, ranging from new product design and development to sustaining engineering and testing services in a variety of domains such as wireless networks, network management, optical networking, switching systems and broadband networks. Hughes BPO provides in-bound customer care services using voice, chat and e-mail across multiple industry segments such as IT, telecom, automotive, insurance, banking and financial services.

A complex IT infrastructure

The smooth functioning of development servers is critical for HSS. Even one development server failing for just a day can result in up to 150 developers sitting idle. Obviously this leads to dissatisfaction amongst teams, and tight project delivery schedules are compromised. HSS has many users who access the infrastructure from outside—over the Internet or on leased lines. These links are critical to HSS, along with others to customer sites, the parent company and other geographically dispersed locations.

A solution to monitor productivity

After evaluating all options, HSS deployed CA’s Unicenter Network & Systems Management (NSM) at six sites, including the BPO division and the Bangalore development centre. It chose Unicenter for its ability to manage the health and availability of server infrastructure and monitor the performance of the same. Another key factor was the seamless integration of server management with the desktop management solution on the diverse platforms available at HSS. This helped monitor the status of all infrastructure elements such as network devices, business applications and database systems.

“We required a solution that would not only tell us that systems were running but also that people could log on, enter data, search for data… in short, do something with the data. That’s where Unicenter really stepped in,” says Rajeev Seoni, assistant VP and head - IT at HSS.

To ensure that the HSS server infrastructure was running at an optimum level, the company wanted to establish threshold limits for server performance. It required effective tools to monitor server performance in terms of CPU, memory and I/O utilisation. CA’s Unicenter solution allowed HSS to plan for future capacity requirements and undertake load balancing to properly allocate work amongst servers.

HCL’s enterprise-wide infrastructure management

HCL Technologies (HCLT) implemented IBM Tivoli to raise performance benchmarks for enterprise-wide infrastructure management within the organisation. This implementation will enhance the cost-effectiveness of HCL Tech’s infrastructure management by transforming its processes, saving time and cutting IT costs, while improving security. Earlier this year, HCLT also partnered with IBM on Rational to strengthen its software development capabilities.

Enhancing service level agreements

The implementation of key modules from the Tivoli Suite helps HCLT develop its Tivoli skill base, enhance its service portfolio and drive sales. Tivoli’s integrated view lets the company identify and fix problems before they happen. The integrated view of the environment allows HCLT to interpret the information in the context of its business goals. This investment is aimed at enhancing the delivery of Service Level Agreements and making compliance easy.

“We went through a detailed techno-commercial evaluation of industry leading products in the infrastructure management space and concluded that Tivoli would be the best fit for a diverse and heterogeneous organisation such as ours. We believe IBM’s ability to offer an integrated set of solutions will help us to transform our operating environment, where we are able to respond with flexibility and speed to changing customer needs and market opportunities. We are pleased with IBM’s approach and commitment in working with us as our trusted technology partner”, says Shyamal Bhattacharya, VP-Global IT Services, HCL Technologies.

According to R Dhamodaran, VP & country manager, Software Group & Developer Relations, IBM India, “IBM’s Tivoli Software will enable HCL technologies to access a set of technology capabilities that support a more flexible business design and simplify the IT infrastructure, thereby developing an On Demand operating environment”.

Managing infrastructure

Management software from Tivoli helps HCLT realise the maximum business value by letting it integrate, manage, and secure its e-business infrastructure and processes end-to-end. The addition of autonomic capabilities in Tivoli also helps improve availability and performance.

Better database management at Gesco

We want to be pioneers in the value-for-money IM solutions market Akash Saraf Joint Managing Director and CEO Zenith Software

Great Eastern Shipping Company (Gesco) chose SAAZ Network Monitoring System (NMS), SAAZ Server and Applications Manager (SAM) for Windows and SAAZ Oracle Manager to improve its IT infrastructure management.

According to Akash Saraf, joint managing director and CEO, Zenith Software, “Our pricing was a major barrier for companies in adopting IM, but now the scenario is changing and we want to be pioneers in the value-for-money IM solutions market.”

Addressing the core problems

In Gesco, SAAZ NMS is used in monitoring WAN links between offices and is configured for monitoring bandwidth and port utilisation, latency and errors in the links, up-down statistics, and monitoring Cisco equipment statistics among other things. SAAZ SAM is used for monitoring Lotus Notes and the Oracle Manager monitors Gesco’s critical database that runs on Sun Solaris. All these have been configured for reporting trends and sending alerts when threshold values are breached.

Bypassing bottlenecks

With Oracle Manager, Gesco can identify CPU bottlenecks and find out which SQL queries are resource intensive. With a combination of SAAZ SAM and NMS, Gesco can zero in on the problem and confirm whether it lies in the network or in the database. R P Dumasia, general manager-IT, Gesco says, “We selected Zenith SAAZ as it does everything and is cost effective. The support is very good which is critical.”