The background
The Client, based in the United Kingdom, is a large Utilities company providing water for the consumers across the United Kingdom. The client was keen to centralize the IT infrastructure management services for better operations management and higher productivity.

The challenge
The Client faced significant challenges to centralize the management of IT infrastructure spread over more than 160 locations in UK and had platforms that included WinNT, Win2K, Novell, Dec-Alpha, Solaris and HP-UX servers, networking equipment of CISCO, 3 Com and Stratacom and databases of Oracle, Informix and MS-SQL. A major requirement of the Client was to consolidate the following services:

n Network Monitoring and Management
n Server Monitoring and Administration
n Database Monitoring and Administration

The IT Infrastructure spread over more than 160 locations in the UK includes around 3,000 Networking elements, 350 Application servers and 50 Database servers.

The solution
Wipro implemented a solution for centralized management of the IT infrastructure using the HP OpenView framework. This is based on an Onsite-Offshore model. The monitoring and administration is done from Wipro’s NOC in India on a 24 x 7 basis. A smaller onsite team provides services, which require visits to the customer sites.

Wipro’s Point of Presence (PoP) in the UK has cluster servers for event correlation and monitoring tools. The PoP filters and sends events to the NOC. At the NOC, any event or failure is automatically logged into Remedy, the trouble ticketing system.

The events are also displayed on a large screen. Engineers are notified whenever an event occurs and a trouble ticket is automatically logged. The NOC engineers login to diagnose and fix the problem. If the problem cannot be solved, it is escalated to the Onsite engineer.

HP OpenView provides the framework to implement complete IT operations management architecture and is designed to provide reliable and efficient management of servers and databases through a single console.

The broad schematic of the solution is given in the diagram below:

Overall, the monitoring and management of components fall into the following 2 categories:

n Novell, NT, UNIX Servers and databases: Key components of the solution include Openview for Operations (OVO), Openview for Internet Services (OVIS), Openview for Performance (OVP), Openview Reporter (OVR), Smart Plug-Ins for Database, Novell ZENworks for servers and Enterprise Managers for database administration.

n Networking elements (CISCO, STARATCOM, 3COM): Key components of the solution include Network Node Manager (NNM), Openview for Operations (OVO), Cisco Works for Routed WAN manager (CW2K), 3COM Advance Network Supervisor, Strataview plus /Cisco WAN Manager, Logec event correlation engine for NNM and Clarify Client.

Using the available NOC in India and the PoPs in UK and USA, Wipro has been able to quickly implement the solution, by establishing a link from the UK PoP to the customer’s network. Redundancy is built into the links. Further, each PoP serves as the Disaster Recovery site for the other.

Customer Benefits
The benefits to the client has been manifold, some of which are indicated below:

n Disaster Proof operations due to multi-site service delivery
n Cost effective 24 x 7 services from Offshore
n Processes based on ITIL framework and ISO 9000 system for efficient IT infrastructure Management
n Services based on SLAs.

Team DQ