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Mergers and acquisitions are becoming more and more commonplace in business today.
But their success is reliant upon a whole variety of interdependent factors. Staff
must embrace the change, understand business objectives, and learn how to work
with new people. And central to everything is a cohesive IT infrastructure, to
provide the communication and data exchange that will drive the business forward.
A consolidated approach
Formed from the UK Government?s Intervention Board for Agricultural Produce and
part of Defra (the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), RPA found
itself with several communications problems. Not only did it have two virtually
independent IT networks ? which significantly hampered data access for all employees
? but a desktop systems refresh had been long overdue for both parties, and was
now vital for RPA to make progress towards the 2005 eGovernment deadline. This
would entail the migration and deployment of new applications to some 3,500 end
users spread across five sites.
Additionally, the merger meant RPA server architecture was both dispersed and
inefficient, with some 60 servers shared between sites. Server operation had become
slow and maintenance was unnecessarily time consuming, significantly increasing
RPA?s operational expenditure.
In view of the immediate needs, it was therefore imperative that RPA took action
as quickly and efficiently as possible. The Agency chose
Symantec
ON
iCommand to migrate and deploy software, with a full end-to-end installation
and support service provided by Symantec partner and reseller Scorpio Network
Solutions.
Symantec
ON
iCommand
Symantec
ON
iCommand is a full life cycle solution for the remote management of multi-platform
environments over any type of network and using any web-enabled device. As a heterogeneous
solution employing scheduled push technology, IT administrators can remotely deploy operating systems, applications,
service packs and security patches with ease, to a whole variety of devices ?
using HTTP/SSL protocols to provide full security.
What?s more,
Symantec
ON
iCommand can also help dynamically configure all of these elements on multiple
computers and servers simultaneously, without the need for technicians to move
from site to site. And should computers ever fail, the Symantec ONiCommand one-click system recovery enables administrators to easily rebuild them
to their most recent configuration, in a matter of minutes.
John Gray, Infrastructure Programme Manager for the project at RPA, chose
Symantec
ON
iCommand because of the comprehensive nature of the offering. ?We put this project out to tender with several other organisations, but Symantec?s
solution quite clearly offered everything their competitors had, plus much more,? he explains.
?Scorpio had also done a significant amount of work with us before RPA was formed,
and we had good experience of Symantec?s range of products. It therefore seemed
a natural choice.?
Rapid roll-out
The first and most notable benefit of ON iCommand was its ability to deploy and configure software, and even build machines
remotely ? without the need for Gray?s team to be on site. ?Before we installed ON iCommand, building a machine from scratch would take
two hours ? and a technician would have to travel out to deliver the finished
machine,? says Gray. ?Now, we can put all the machines on site and build each of them from the office
in less than an hour. We can even wake up machines without the user being there
? all that?s needed is a LAN connection?
Scorpio Network Solutions was instrumental in the applications migration and
roll-out, using the ON iCommand Package Writing facility to write in excess of 80 scripts for automated
deployment and administration tasks. This enabled Gray?s team to migrate all users
from Windows NT? 4 to Windows 2000? Active Directory, update the email system
to Exchange 2000, and deploy Windows? XP Professional across all sites ? in a
matter of weeks.
?With around 3,500 machines to modify, we could have easily spent about nine
months deploying software using our previous methods,? reveals Gray. ?But, thanks to
Symantec
ON
iCommand, we were able to roll out software to all machines in just ten weeks.
That even included end user training.?
Security and server consolidation
The remote deployment facility has also been helping the Agency remain secure.
ONiCommand enables patches and security updates to be both deployed and dynamically
configured from one single location to tens of machines simultaneously. And as
security threats grow in number and scale, Gray believes this facility is essential
to help RPA stay protected:
?Being able to do this more quickly is not only more convenient, but naturally
makes us more responsive as an organisation?
What?s more, as a heterogeneous solution, ON iCommand was able to help RPA build new servers. With more than 50 NT 4 application
and network servers and 12 Exchange 5.5 servers in use, maintenance had become
both costly and time consuming, and performance was unnecessarily slow. Consequently,
RPA turned to ONiCommand to roll out server applications onto consolidated server architecture.
As a result, the Agency has quickly and easily been able to reduce its 60-strong
server architecture to 30 ? making for a considerable saving in both data access
times and total cost of ownership.
True efficiency ? and beyond
John Gray believes that ON iCommand has made a great difference to the way he and his team do their jobs:
?ON iCommand is helping us provide the IT services that are central to all daily
tasks within RPA. The remote build and configuration facility means our repair
times are now kept to a minimum, and that in turn means staff can deliver the
excellent customer service that RPA is noted for.?
Scorpio Network Solutions stayed on site for on-hand assistance throughout the
project, and a team now remains to support RPA with its server management. Indeed,
the project was so successful that ON iCommand was chosen to facilitate the next step in the growth plan of RPA ? the
merger with the British Cattle Movement Service (BCMS).
Gray believes that ON iCommand will be helping his team to maintain RPA?s IT systems for many years
to come: ?As far as I?m concerned, ON iCommand has an immeasurable shelf life. As long
as my team continues to provide support and maintenance,ONiCommand will carry
on helping us to work quickly and efficiently.? |
