An Post has been using IBM’s Tivoli software to manage its systems since 1999. At that time it evaluated several different system-management packages and concluded that Tivoli was best suited to providing for its requirements within a single product suite.
With more than 8,000 employees and a nationwide IT infrastructure comprising more than 200 Windows 2000 servers and 2,300 desktops, An Post is constantly under pressure to reduce costs.
In 1999 the business implemented a number of new projects which required the IT infrastructure to expand rapidly. Software installations and upgrades were time consuming with developers either physically visiting sites or supporting the installation of CDs issued to branches. Support staff were spending a lot of time firefighting instead of managing problems proactively, because the existing tools used to manage the environment had become inadequate. The company wanted a suitable product to improve its It management capabilities.
Originally it intended to buy the full suite of Tivoli system-management software but due to the cost of the software and budget constraints only the essential products were acquired, namely Tivoli Framework, Tivoli Enterprise Console, Software Distribution & Inventory, Tivoli Remote Control, Tivoli NetView and Tivoli Distributed Monitoring.
According to Ruth Bourke, IT Operations Manager, An Post has realised a number of benefits from implementing Tivoli. ‘The overall cost of managing the An Post network countrywide has been greatly reduced by managing our network entirely in-house using NetView,’ she says. ‘The extensive use of Remote Control allows both application and operations support staff to respond rapidly to issues wherever they occur throughout our main sites and more than 150 remote locations.’
‘We have minimised virus and software risk,’ she continues. ‘Without Tivoli a great deal more time would be spent managing software risk. Tivoli allows our systems-management team to concentrate on delivering what the business needs, rather than having to spend excessive time managing virus threats and distributing patches and hot fixes.’
By using Tivoli to remove the overhead associated with systems management An Post was able to devote resources to key projects like server consolidation and disaster recovery. All servers were upgraded to Windows 2000 from NT during 2003 and as a result of consolidation, decommissioned servers were relocated to an alternative data centre to support An Post’s disaster recovery programme.
All desktops have been standardised on Windows 2000 and are now locked down with a standard Office XP configuration. ‘We had to put a standard desktop configuration in place to take full advantage of Tivoli,’ says Colin Mulkerrins, a technical support specialist. ‘When we first bought it in 1999 we had several multiple desktop operating systems and we were only getting 50 per cent success on software upgrades. Since desktop standardisation and a major network upgrade we are now getting 99-100 per cent success rates.’
In future Bourke says that An Post is implementing Tivoli Service Level Advisor so it can formalise existing service level agreements and monitor performance more closely. An Post will also chair the Tivoli User Group in Ireland this year. One of the issues that it hopes to raise in that forum is the need for IBM to devote more time and effort to developing the services associated with the product.
13/04/04
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