RAC - second case study
RAC chooses Logicalis for long-term service solution
The Client
RAC has been working with IT services company Logicalis since 1997. At that time RAC had just a handful of IBM Systemp machines installed in its Bradley Stoke supercentre near Bristol and today there are in excess of 60 Systemps & IBM eServer pSeries in operation.
RAC Open Systems Manager Jeremy Lewis was aware of Logicalis' strong working relationship with IBM and felt that this would give RAC access to the right technology and resources to support its rapidly growing business.
The Challenge
When RAC started to plan its major "Customer Front Of.ce" project in autumn 2001, Jeremy Lewis asked Logicalis to provide thirty pSeries machines in just a couple of months. This was so that they could get the entire infrastructure in place for the first phase of this new customer relationship management project.
Jeremy explains, "We started to place orders for new equipment straight away, the "Customer Front Office" project was going to involve a signi.cant implementation of the Siebel CRM software application, and from a hardware perspective, accommodating 30 new machines was a major task in itself. We knew that Logicalis would be able to provide the dedicated focus and resource we needed for this, often placing an engineer on site with us for days or weeks at a time."
The "Customer Front Office" project is part of a major shift to open systems by RAC that had started earlier in 2001 and is valued in excess of £20 million. The project had started with the replacement and migration of several legacy applications from an IBM mainframe that was due to be retired and the creation of a data warehouse also installed on pSeries machines provided by Logicalis. An IBM Magstar 3590 tape system, also provided and installed by Logicalis, is used for back up and recovery of all the pSeries and Systemp servers.
The Solution
Once the Siebel implementation had begun it became clear very quickly that the new systems would need monitoring twenty four hours per day seven days per week.
As RAC does not have dedicated 24x7 in-house computer operators Jeremy Lewis approached Logicalis about monitoring the servers and processors out of normal business hours.
Using BMC Patrol, the same system that RAC uses internally, Logicalis checks and monitors the machines are running at correct capacities and in general monitor the health of most of the front of.ce and many of the data warehouse systems.
"Really Logicalis is acting as RAC's eyes, looking for alerts generated by BMC Patrol and then notifying the RAC helpdesk to escalate the problem as necessary. We run batch processes overnight using Tivoli Workload Scheduler and Logicalis is also monitoring those batch runs. It certainly helps us sleep at night knowing that the situation is being monitored at all times by Logicalis' technical experts," said Lewis.
By the autumn of 2002 the Siebel implementation was well underway and RAC reached a point where additional storage was required. RAC realised that choosing to implement a SAN (Storage Area Network), as a way to centralizing storage, would reduce management costs and increase disk and tape utilisation.
The new SAN was supplied and con.gured by Logicalis and enabled RAC to put the majority of its disk storage under central management. Instead of having disks attached to multiple servers there are now 5 terabytes of disk installed within the SAN with all the servers attached.
This centralisation of storage makes the allocation of disk space easier as it can be done dynamically and required simplified cabling throughout.
Jeremy Lewis explains, "We were very reliant on Logicalis for the SAN installation because it had only recently been introduced into the market and we did not have sufficient experience in that new technology. We spent a great deal of time planning the migration of the data warehouse and financial systems with Logicalis."
"To prove the concept we moved some of the development environments first followed by the production environments.
Fortunately the whole process happened very smoothly thanks to Logicalis." The first phase of the "Customer Front Office" Siebel implementation went live in July 2002 and continues for the foreseeable future during a period of further consolidation.
Jeremy Lewis concluded, "We have been working with Logicalis since 1997 and they have been instrumental in terms of the introduction of open systems and new technologies as the business drives forward."
We have always been able to rely on Logicalis for additional support as and when we require it. In the same way that RAC provides its members with new and progressive motoring services, while making them feel safe on the road, Logicalis has done the same for us."
The Bottom Line
Ever since its foundation in 1897, RAC has been consistently at the forefront in developing motoring services.
RAC first introduced uniformed patrols in 1901 and then roadside emergency telephone boxes in 1912.
Today it boasts the world's most advanced computer system to deal with calls from its six million members.