With sales of €12.5 billion in 2003, Alcatel is a leading communications network infrastructure provider. To reduce operating costs, increase efficiency and integrate newly acquired companies, Alcatel is in the midst of a major worldwide initiative to consolidate and standardize its IT systems and operations. As part of this global ERP consolidation program, in North America Alcatel is leveraging expertise and systems from HP to consolidate data centers, ensure high availability and provide end-user help desk support.

In a constantly changing communications industry, one thing remains consistent: end-user demand for more services. To meet this demand, many of today’s major carriers, service providers and enterprises rely on Alcatel. With global headquarters in Paris, France, and operations in 130 countries, Alcatel is a leading provider of global communications solutions—offering undersea-tospace –based networks and all types of networks in between that drive communications around the world.

With sales of €12.5 billion in 2003, Alcatel’s share in the communications network market is considerable. To expand that share in the North American market, the company has bolstered its offerings with the acquisition of a number of North American companies across the United States and Canada in the last four years.

To drive down costs and increase efficiencies, Alcatel reorganized all operating units in the U.S. and Canada into a single North American entity in early 2003. It’s an integration strategy that’s really paid off. However, CIO Barry Denroche of Alcatel North America says consolidating IT operations across two countries in a way that supports corporate standards and strategy globally has posed some challenges, as well.

“A mix of applications, systems and processes accompanied
each newly integrated entity,” Denroche explains. “To control the impact of those changes, we set a new IT imperative into motion. Our goal was to find the synergies, then consolidate processes, systems and data centers—and cut costs while doing so.”

One data center stood out as a model. The Ottawa, Ontario site—standardized on HP 9000 servers and backed with Mission Critical Support from HP—had run SAP R/3 with just 15 minutes of unplanned downtime for the last four years.

Truly a model for high availability, the Ottawa site was also a model for successful consolidation. When phenomenal growth in 1999 had created widely dispersed and disparate ERP systems, HP consultants teamed with Deloitte Consulting to consolidate the environment into Ottawa, assisting Alcatel in standardizing on an HP and SAP R/3 solution.

As Alcatel consolidates all North American ERP operations into Ottawa, the Ottawa center’s user population grows. The data center will soon support 8,000 users, including 4,000 SAP users. Further, Alcatel is meeting its cost-cutting initiatives, streamlining processes and fortifying itself against the inevitable impact of IT change.

“By consolidating all ERP systems in North America, we expect to decrease associated operating costs by 35 percent within two years,” says Denroche. “By standardizing our North American ERP operations to ensure alignment with our global transformation strategy, we are able to lessen complexity across the environment and make it easier to allocate resources to meet the changing needs of our business. HP is an important partner in this effort.”

Rapid R/3 implementation
Today, 18 high-end and mid-range HP 9000 servers and two HP XP storage solutions make up the Ottawa data center environment. In addition to supporting the full suite of SAP ERP applications, the systems provide a clustered mission-critical Oracle® back end for manufacturing and product development, as well as other business applications.

HP Services and Deloitte implemented the original solution in 1999 within just five months—traditional R/3 deployments take an average of 18 months. Leveraging the HP Rapid/IT for SAP R/3 infrastructure model, HP project managers designed and implemented the systems up to the SAP Basis layer, while Deloitte deployed R/3.

Now in the midst of a consolidation project that began in early 2003, four ERP environments are being integrated into the Ottawa data center. HP recently deployed two new HP rp8400 servers to support the added demand. Alcatel will soon integrate another two ERP environments, including one in Dallas, Texas, the company’s North American headquarters. Once complete, this will bring the Ottawa SAP user population up to 5,000.

As consolidation proceeds, Denroche says Alcatel will selectively apply outsourcing, while internal resources are reserved for more strategic activities. “Over the years, HP has done a lot to earn our trust,” Denroche says.

Exceeding five nines of uptime for four years
As the center’s user population increases, the demand for high availability will increase, as well. HP Serviceguard, a high availability clustering solution for HP 9000 systems, maximizes uptime and keeps service levels high. For added protection, the second Class A data center in Dallas, Texas, which serves as the development environment, will be utilized as a hot site for disaster recovery.

In a business with revenues in the billions, downtime can be costly. “Even an hour of downtime could have a big impact on revenue,” says Peter Downey, director of computing operations, Alcatel Canada. “With HP systems and services supporting our SAP environment, we’ve exceeded five nines of uptime for the last four years. Users go about their business activities, confident that the systems will be there and working, and they always are. “

Downey attributes much of that success to HP Mission Critical Support, a comprehensive agreement that covers the server, storage and network environment that supports the R/3 solution. As part of the package, HP manages patches and updates and tracks transaction volumes to ensure capacity continues to align with business demands.

It’s the proactive nature of that support that Downey credits with maintaining high availability. “HP proactively comes forward with support plans, makes recommendations and clearly states what’s needed, then backs that up with a support agreement that makes it all work for us,” he says.

Downey recalls a situation that demonstrated the value of HP support. While bringing a new business division online, a problem emerged just four days before the “go live” date. Meeting that date was critical to establishing credibility with this new group, where schedules were set and expectations were high. HP responded immediately, providing support specialists and an additional system to meet the deadline, then worked to find the root cause and resolve the issue.

“This was a shining example of why HP Mission Critical Support is important to our business,” says Downey. “With HP Services, there’s no blaming or finger pointing. They just roll up their sleeves and resolve the issue.”

HP help desk reduces support costs
To support Alcatel’s North American user base of 8,000 employees, HP provides a fully managed help desk solution. The North America Help Desk provides a single point of contact for all users across the U.S. and Canada to simplify support, increase productivity and lower costs. Users receive 24x7 support for all SAP ERP applications, a suite of Microsoft solutions and a variety of HP and non- HP hardware across the environment.

Creating a central help desk was part of Alcatel’s overall plan to consolidate systems and processes. Leveraging the proven four-year success of the HP help desk in Canada, Alcatel decided to consolidate all of its support there— integrating five major U.S. sites into the North America Help Desk within just 10 weeks. The successful integration of these help desks marked the completion of the first project under Alcatel’s new consolidation initiative.

Alcatel credits a large part of that success to HP’s adherence to best practice methodologies for service delivery. Implementing the original help desk service according to the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), an industry standard for IT management, paved the way for expanding services and meeting deadlines. By July 2003, the North America Help Desk doubled the number of seats supported, including support for 4,000 SAP users.

“It was an aggressive time frame,” says Mary McCluskey, director of service management for Alcatel Canada. “By building upon our existing best-in-class service structure from HP, we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. HP’s solid methodologies and strong project management skills, combined with the efforts of our internal team, enabled us to go live exactly when we said we would.”

McCluskey says HP’s standardized and documented processes contribute greatly to the success of the consolidated help desk. For example, supporting the U.S. sites meant creating a knowledge base to cover 250 new processes. HP developed sustainable, repeatable processes for the help desk staff to follow as they resolve a call.

Creating and documenting consistent processes for all to share standardizes delivery—keeping quality high, resolution faster and users happy. In fact, since consolidating the North America Help Desk, overall satisfaction has averaged 90 percent over the last six months. SAP support satisfaction alone reached an average of 97 percent during the same time period.

Call resolution rates are high, as well. Alcatel measures this rate by the total number of cases closed within a 30-day period. The HP service level agreement targets a closure rate of 97 percent, but HP surpasses that each month by closing 100 percent of all cases within that time frame.

Further, McCluskey says the consolidated help desk meets IT cost-cutting imperatives. Although the number of users doubled, the cost per call decreased by 19 percent for general help desk calls. HP eSupport services contribute to those costs savings. Users tap into the Web-based solution to perform routine tasks, such as setting up an account, without assistance from a live agent.

In addition to streamlining service delivery, McCluskey says the HP help desk frees internal staff to focus on other important technical issues. “With the HP help desk performing routine tasks and troubleshooting, our internal IT staff can devote time to other activities, such as analyzing the business,” she says.

Outsourcing also gives Alcatel the ability to easily scale the help desk to meet anticipated peaks in demand. For example, getting support for a new software rollout takes a simple request to HP for additional help desk staff. “With managed services from HP, we quickly respond and adapt to the needs of our user community, ramping up or down as demands change,” says McCluskey.

Alcatel continues to rely on HP technology and services to keep availability and user productivity high, amidst an environment that demands responsive, adaptive solutions to keep up with constant growth and change. “HP has a proven track record of results at Alcatel,” Denroche says. “They really have a willingness to understand Alcatel’s business and where we need to go.”

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