4-page Case Study - Posted 11/27/2006

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SK Corporation

Petrochemical Company Boosts Productivity with Real Time Integrated Messaging

SK Corporation (SK) is a leading energy and petrochemical company based in Seoul, South Korea. It has 4,916 employees and reached sales of KRW22trillion (U.S.$23billion) in 2005. Faced with the need to upgrade its ten year old legacy workgroup system, it wanted a next-generation work environment to enable it to realize its High Performance (HIPER) Workplace project objectives. These aim to provide a work environment where employees can make best use of their potential by efficiently supporting communication and collaboration in real-time across all work areas. The company opted to install Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 to prepare for its future work environment and give improved productivity and accessibility, plus enhanced managerial convenience and a reduction in maintenance costs compared to the previous IBM Lotus Notes platform.

Situation

Founded in 1962, SK Corporation (SK) is a leading energy and petrochemical company based in Seoul, South Korea, with 4,916 employees. It is the fourth largest refiner in Asia and operates the world's second largest single complex oil refinery. It has 22 offices around the world and made sales worth KRW 22trillion (U.S.$23billion) in 2005. The company has actively made inroads into new businesses such as IT since the mid 1990s, and is sparing no effort for overseas business development, and to become a major energy provider in the Asian-Pacific region.

SK was proceeding with the implementation of a next-generation work environment, with the primary purpose being the realization of real-time collaboration across all work areas. The company had been using IBM Notes-based groupware for the last 10 years, but needed to upgrade to a next-generation collaboration infrastructure that would allow it to realize its High Performance (HIPER) Workplace project objectives – including providing a work environment where all members of the group could reach upper ground in the competitive business world.

Mike Byoen, Chief Information Officer of SK, states that, in the increasingly competitive global environment, the company has always put stress on individual employee’s productivity as the key to the enhancement of competitive edge for the company.

“The purpose of the HIPER Workplace project was to set up a next-generation work environment whereby our employees can more productively focus on their job or, in other words, to make the best use of their brains in a voluntary and enthusiastic manner, by efficiently supporting communication and collaboration,” he says.

“Our concern regarding the project was not merely what solution we needed to choose, but what technology could readily support our real-time collaboration and IT vision for the company.”

Solution

Under the three strategies of team collaboration, globality and mobility, SK started the HIPER Workplace project in June 2006. The project aimed to strengthen the e-mailing system; set up a video-conference function; improve the company Community of Practice (CoP); strengthen the integrated search function; and establish a professional company network.

Our concern regarding this project was not what solution we needed, but what technology could readily support our IT vision. After considerable thought, we finally selected Exchange Server 2007.  Mike Byoen Chief Information Officer SK Corporation

SK made efforts to set the direction of the new-generation collaboration project as a ‘revolution’, rather than ‘evolution’, says Byoen. “For the last 10 years, the company continuously improved its IBM Notes-based groupware to meet its management strategies and a changing IT environment. However, for the 10 years to come, we needed to establish a more innovative work environment.”

Byoen says company concern regarding the project was not merely what solution it needed to choose, but what technology could support SK’s real-time collaboration and IT vision. After extensive research, SK finally selected Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 installed on HP ProLiant Blade System Servers using Dual-Core Intel® Xeon® processors. This solution offered best-in-class reliability through leading Random Access Storage (RAS) features built in to the processors, chipsets and memory architecture to improve reliability and deliver high levels of system availability for Exchange Server 2007.

When SK was considering the advantages of its ‘new-generation’ vision and the ‘burden of risk’ from a beta-based environment, Microsoft Korea offered the company a place on the Rapid Deployment Program (RDP), which helped dispel concerns, such as the successful migration of a huge amount of company data.

After deciding to opt into the RDP, SK gathered engineers from implementers SKC&C and Microsoft Korea, and created 100 user accounts to set up a test network. With a test-run project including seven weeks of education, server implementation, and development, the company verified the functionalities and integrity of Exchange Server 2007.

Based on the results from the RDP, the company carried out two tests of teaming, planning, and data transfer for data migration. Next the company set up three mail boxes based on Active 1 Passive cluster with mailboxes for a total of 7,100 people including 5,600 members of SK staff. In addition, the deployment of an ISA Server enabled SK staff to check their e-mails and access job-related data from outside the work environment.

Young-Gun Cho, Assistant Manager of the IT Planning and Support Team of SK, asserts that Exchange Server 2007 is the ideal solution for SK’s strategy for communication integration including e-mailing, instant messaging, voice conferencing, and video conferencing.

“Using Office SharePoint Server, Windows Live Communication Server, Office Communicator as well as Exchange Server 2007, we are currently developing a system which will support knowledge sharing and management, communication and collaboration, and all of the services will be accessed from a single point,” he explains.

Benefits

The adoption of Exchange Server 2007 running on Dual-Core Intel® Xeon® processors has resulted in a reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for the SK IT department, and assured a collaboration-oriented communication system in line with the HIPER Workplace Project, and a more efficient and responsive enterprise messaging system that offers up to three times the performance of one based previous single-core based servers, giving new levels of price performance and an improved cost per mailbox. 

Improved productivity

The new system will be based on Microsoft® Outlook 2007 which is the best match for Exchange Server 2007, and will allow users to enjoy various features that improve productivity. These include enhanced functionally, speed of the e-mailing, and the linkage of the internal messenger and address directories compared to the previous IBM Notes environment.

New business platform

SK used to pay billions of KRW on an annual basis. When the company completes its new-generation Exchange Server 2007-based collaboration system in December 2006, it expects to use Exchange 2007 as its new business platform to prepare for the future cost-effective work environment.

Improved accessibility

With the deployment of Exchange Server 2007, employees can now communicate anytime, anywhere, rather than being tied to a screen or terminal. “When assessing the benefits that we have enjoyed, we put stress on the fact that we can communicate anytime, anywhere and with any devices, rather than simply looking at improved functionalities, speed and convenience of the system,” says Cho.

Enhanced managerial convenience

The improvements in speed and connectivity, as well as added security, mean that management can access important data much more readily and quickly than previously. “As we have set up a work environment which supports real-time communication and collaboration, we can make corporate decisions more quickly and promptly, which will eventually lead to strengthened corporate competitiveness,” says Cho.

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about SK C&C products and services, call or visit the Web site at:
www.skcc.com/eng/
 
For more information about SK Corporation products and services, call or visit the Web site at:
www.eng.skcorp.com/   

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio

For more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to:
www.microsoft.com/servers/default.mspx

For more information about Microsoft Exchange Server, go to:
www.microsoft.com/exchange 

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published October 2006