One of the challenges of doing business in the Information Age is to effectively manage information itself. Corporations need to effectively leverage the information that is housed on, or passes through, their virtual environments. Open Text is the world’s largest independent provider of Enterprise Content Management solutions to the world’s largest corporations and government agencies — a responsibility made easier by HP technology. Today, virtually all corporations rely on IT to do their business. But for Open Text, IT is its business. Among its Global Services offerings, the company deploys and manages a server infrastructure that customers use to run Open Text’s Livelink ECM solution. The company currently utilizes HP Software tools to monitor the corporate applications. The Open Text data center serves 46 offices in North America and Europe, and houses about 460 servers, including a mix of about 220 HP ProLiant DL servers and HP ProLiant BL blade servers. The right servers HP’s product line also lets Open Text select servers based on highly selective requirements. “We don’t need every server to be available around the clock,” Chubb says. “With HP, we can select from a variety of servers. If we need a system configured for high availability, we can get one with a dual processor, redundant fiber cards, fan kits and power supplies. But if we need less for some other application, we can buy less. HP’s product line lets us do that.” Equally important, Chubb notes, is system manageability. For this, Open
Text uses HP software. “We have to respond quickly to customers’
IT needs, whether it’s the deployment of a new solution or the resolution
of a support issue,” Chubb says. “HP management software provides
the toolset we need to streamline virtually every aspect of our server Streamlining server management Open Text also relies on HP Software to help it manage its help desk operations. “We used to manage all of our service requests through e-mail,” says Bonnie Schirk, IT Technical Support, North America. “Now we use HP Service Desk Software to track requests by location, caller and workgroup. Our processes are more accountable, because every incident now has an owner. And we have metrics we can use to evaluate our performance and look for ways to improve.” Implementing Service Desk required Open Text to work differently than they did before, Schirk says. “We didn’t split out service calls from incidents, but now that we do, we can track service requests as well as incoming incidents.” Tracking this data has helped Open Text improve its support services. “Calls are directed to one of several teams, depending on the nature and criticality of the issue,” Schirk explains. “Now we can direct support requests to the right teams more efficiently. We’ve reduced the number of issues that have to be escalated, and we’ve increased our first-call resolution by 25 percent.” Open Text also uses the help desk data to make its technical support services more proactive. “Trends in help desk calls may indicate that a particular application or system configuration needs to be modified or tuned,” says Chubb. “HP Software also lets us track service calls by application, so we can become more proactive. We can look for trends and make decisions about our systems before a problem escalates.” Tracking service incidents in HP Software also helps Open Text meet regulatory obligations. “With HP Software, we can track incidents that are generated by the software itself, or that we identify outside the system. It creates a paper trail and helps prove that we are managing our IT systems effectively and efficiently,” says Chubb. HP Operations Manager Software for Windows performs a similar function by feeding data on server performance into HP Service Desk software. “If certain incidents occur, it generates a ticket in Service Desk to bring it to our attention. As a result, often we’re able to fix problems before our end users even know they’re problems.” Support when it’s needed Open Text has had positive experiences with HP support. “We moved our data center, and HP sent a technical resource to provide on-site assistance for 24 hours over a weekend,” Chubb says. “We moved over 250 servers about five kilometers, and HP was there to help us make sure everything was up and running in our new facility.” Chubb appreciates knowing that HP will be available to lend resources, should Open Text need them. But having the tools to prevent problems in the first place is even better. “HP management software has enabled Open Text to implement IT Infrastructure Library processes throughout our help desk and support organizations,” Chubb says. “HP has given us the tools we need to support our customers and help ensure excellent system performance and availability.”
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