Tube Lines

Maintenance Company for Railway Lines Consolidates with Terminal Services

Tube Lines provides maintenance and support services for the London Underground. With employees spread across more than 90 locations, Tube Lines relied on its terminal services solution to deliver central access to applications. However, limited scalability and low bandwidth affected application performance and employee productivity. The company added more server computers to accommodate its users, but this increased the management burden and strained network resources further. To improve performance and simplify management, Tube Lines is implementing Windows Server® 2008 Terminal Services on 64-bit servers from HP. The company expects to decrease terminal services hardware by 80 percent, making management easier. The company will reduce costs as a result. In addition, faster connections and improved stability will help employees to work more easily.

Situation

We have a work force scattered across London. By using Windows Server 2008 and Terminal Services, we make the working environment easier and ultimately more productive.  David Lewis Program Manager for Technology Refresh Tube Lines

Based in London, Tube Lines has a 30-year Public-Private Partnership contract with the London Underground for all infrastructure maintenance and upgrades on the Jubilee, Northern, and Piccadilly railway lines. The company has several divisions including the Emergency Response Unit, Distribution Services, and Trans Plant. Tube Lines employs 3,500 people, who are responsible for maintaining infrastructure such as signaling, tracks, trains, elevators, and escalators.

Supporting the vast infrastructure of the London Underground—including more than 200 miles of track, 255 trains, and 100 stations—requires employees to work in multiple locations across the city. The company’s IT department manages two data centers and approximately 90 other locations. These sites include individual users’ workstations, major depots, and corporate headquarters.

The IT team provides service to 2,500 Tube Lines employees. Approximately 70 percent of these employees work on local client computers running the Windows® XP Professional operating system, and the remaining 30 percent connect to remote applications through a Windows Terminal Services environment with Citrix MetaFrame XPe installed. Tube Lines employees use the Citrix solution to connect to Microsoft® Office programs and to line-of-business applications such as IBM Maximo Asset Management.

The Tube Lines terminal services solution presented several challenges for the company. Among these, the 32-bit architecture delivered limited scalability, meaning that the addition of new users ultimately required the addition of new server computers. The terminal server farm already included 25 server computers running Citrix MetaFrame XPe on the Windows Server® 2003 Standard Edition operating system. Eleven terminal servers hosted published desktops, and a variety of applications ran on the remaining server computers.

The entire IT environment at Tube Lines consists of 150 server computers and 211 applications. More than 15 percent of the company’s server infrastructure was dedicated to terminal services, and that percentage would only increase as more users were added. Besides increasing the management burden, the addition of hardware also means an increase in power consumption, which is costly and conflicts with the company’s environmental management system. As part of its “Go Green” program, Tube Lines strives to reduce energy to minimize impact on the environment.

The Citrix solution and Windows Server 2003 also required separate management tools, which added another layer of complexity. And maintaining software from multiple vendors was expensive.

Tube Lines wanted to reduce the number of servers that it needed to manage, and it wanted to simplify administration. The company also sought to save money by standardizing on technology from one vendor.

In addition, Tube Lines wanted to improve the services it delivered to remote employees, who had difficulty with application performance over the company’s low-bandwidth connections.
Performance issues were particularly noticeable with Maximo Asset Management software, which remote workers relied on to help them plan and implement jobs. “On average, we get a maximum of about 30 concurrent connections per each published desktop, after which we start to notice performance degradation,” says Gareth Parsons, Technical Design Architect at Tube Lines.

Solution

With Windows Server 2008, when we log on to some parts of our intranet, we can connect faster remotely through Terminal Services than we can from local workstations.  David Lewis Program Manager for Technology Refresh Tube Lines

In 2006, Tube Lines began work on a long-term strategy to optimize its IT infrastructure. The company wanted to upgrade and streamline its technology environment over the next few years. The project included implementing the most current Microsoft software, with Windows Server 2008 as a focal point.

“We decided to look at Microsoft not as a series of products, but as an enterprise technology stack that fully integrates Windows Server 2008 and Terminal Services with the Windows Vista® operating system, the 2007 Microsoft Office suites, Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007,” says David Lewis, Program Manager for Technology Refresh at Tube Lines.

He continues, “Looking at a Microsoft solution as an end-to-end technology stack would not only lower our total cost of ownership, but would also provide a richer and more collaborative environment for our end users.”

The company was particularly interested in Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services features such as Terminal Services RemoteApp™, Session Broker, and Easy Print. Tube Lines believed that the solution would deliver faster, more stable connections and better service to remote employees. In addition, because Windows Server 2008 has several editions that run on 64-bit systems, the company felt that the solution could improve scalability and make it possible to consolidate hardware.

Tube Lines was also interested in management tools such as Windows System Resource Manager, a feature in Windows Server 2008 that administrators can use to control how CPU and memory resources are allocated.

Tube Lines began working with Microsoft Services in early 2007 to design a terminal services solution based on Windows Server 2008. The company began several proofs of concept involving multiple Microsoft products including Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista. In September 2007, the team began deploying Windows Server 2008 Enterprise.

As part of the first phase of the project, Tube Lines installed Windows Server 2008 on an HP ProLiant BL480c server blade computer with a Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor. Tube Lines selected the server computer for its multicore processing capability and 64-bit chip architecture. The improved scalability would support the company’s corporate environmental initiative.

In addition, “the most current HP servers allow dynamic system management, so they reduce their power consumption when they’re not heavily loaded,” explains Adrian Davey, Head of IT at Tube Lines. “We can reduce our cost of ownership because, with Windows Server 2008, the servers can dynamically scale back their CPU speeds.”

He adds, “Tube Lines is committed to making specific reductions in its carbon footprint as part of company business objectives for 2008. Power reductions in our IT environment are a key component of this target. We will achieve this goal in three ways: by using Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 to manage devices more effectively by powering them up or down when required; by using hardware such as blade technology that has reduced power requirements; and by using less hardware with Windows Server 2008 and server virtualization.”

Tube Lines will use Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 together with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 to configure and install the new terminal server. The company is currently managing its 211 applications with a solution from ManageSoft, but plans to replace it with a Microsoft System Center solution as part of its ongoing technology upgrade.

When designing the new solution, Tube Lines decided to emulate its existing terminal services environment as closely as possible. It identified the 10 applications that are most frequently accessed by existing terminal services users, and added those to the Windows Server 2008 solution. Tube Lines then connected approximately 75 users from the existing user base. The employees connect concurrently from office workstations or from home computers through Terminal Services RemoteApp. With this feature, the employees can run multiple remote applications like local programs, in the same session.

Employees use Terminal Services Easy Print to print from Terminal Services RemoteApp applications to their local printers. Tube Lines employees who work from home especially like this feature, because they were unable to print from home in the previous environment.

Tube Lines employees also report more stable connections and faster service with Windows Server 2008. Its enhancements include a new implementation of the TCP/IP stack that improves wide area network (WAN) efficiency. In addition, Terminal Services Session Broker improves performance by allowing users to reconnect to interrupted sessions and by providing load balancing.

According to Lewis, “Even some of the connections where we were expecting the same speed have come through more quickly. For example, with Windows Server 2008, when we log on to some parts of our intranet, we can connect faster remotely through Terminal Services than we can from local workstations.”

Tube Lines plans to replace its current terminal services environment with Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services within six months. The company is currently working on a detailed architecture design to identify the hardware needed. Lewis says, “We want to make sure we’re building in growth from day one.”

Benefits

Tube Lines expects to streamline management by consolidating server hardware and standardizing on Microsoft technology. Applications perform better with Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services, and employees can work more easily from more locations. The streamlined environment will also help the company decrease costs and provide a better work environment for employees.

Running multiple applications from different vendors adds costs. Reducing complexity, with Windows Server 2008, reduces our cost of ownership.  Adrian Davey Head of IT Tube Lines

Streamlines Infrastructure and Management

By implementing Windows Server 2008, Tube Lines expects that it will only need five terminal server computers in the production environment, decreasing its terminal services hardware by 80 percent. The consolidated architecture will be easier to maintain and administer because the solution will be part of a standardized Microsoft environment. For example, the company can use tools that are built into Windows Server 2008, such as Server Manager and the Windows PowerShell™ command-line interface. The solution will also integrate with Microsoft System Center products that will be used to manage the company’s other applications.

“In our existing environment, we need a skill set for the Microsoft platform and we need to support the Citrix environment that runs on top of it,” says Lewis. “By standardizing on Microsoft technology, we can use one skill set instead of two.”

Enhances Productivity

Tube Lines is enhancing employee productivity by implementing Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services. Although the solution is in an early stage of deployment, employees have already noticed an improvement in application performance. “With Windows Server 2008, we have been able to improve the performance and speed of delivering our applications to remote sites over a low-bandwidth environment,” says Davey.

Perhaps more importantly, Tube Lines can provide employees with a more seamless work environment, whether employees move between multiple locations throughout the day or need to connect from home. For example, employees can use Terminal Services from home to check e-mail or to review documents before going directly to a meeting.

“From a people perspective, this solution is about giving employees the flexibility and tools to help them to do their jobs,” says Lewis. “We have a work force scattered across London. By using Windows Server 2008 and Terminal Services, we make the working environment easier and ultimately more productive.”

Decreases Cost of Ownership

Tube Lines expects to realize a considerable decrease in cost of ownership by using Windows Server 2008. The company will benefit from multiple savings, including reduced power consumption, decreased hardware costs, and lower management overhead.

“There are very tangible benefits in implementing Windows Server 2008,” says Davey. “Running multiple applications from different vendors adds costs. Reducing complexity, with Windows Server 2008, reduces our cost of ownership.”

Faster deployment will also help the company to decrease costs. Tube Lines estimates that it currently takes more than three days to configure and install a terminal server computer. By using System Center Configuration Manager 2007 to automate deployment tasks, the company can install a terminal server computer based on Windows Server 2008 in half a day.

“Automated deployment and management tools in the Windows Server 2008 environment will greatly decrease costs,” says Davey. “Not only can we improve the service to our end users, but we can reduce the cost of delivering that service.”

Improves Work Environment

For Tube Lines, the ultimate measure of success is the impact that the solution will have on the employees who use it. “In terms of benefits—whether it’s reduced calls to the service desk, improved stability, or lower cost of maintenance—they all add up,” says Lewis. “But the technology is there to serve the end user. The big win for us with Windows Server 2008 is that it will meet the needs of our employees and give them a great environment to work in.”

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 Tube Lines, call 0845 660 5466 or visit the Web site at:
www.tubelines.com

Windows Server 2008

Windows Server 2008, with built-in Web and virtualization technologies, enables you to increase the reliability and flexibility of your server infrastructure. New virtualization tools, Web resources, and security enhancements help you save time, reduce costs, and provide a platform for a dynamic and optimized datacenter. Powerful new tools like IIS 7.0, Server Manager, and Windows PowerShell, allow you to have more control over your servers and streamline Web, configuration, and management tasks. Advanced security and reliability enhancements like Network Access Protection and the Read-Only Domain Controller option for Active Directory® Domain Services harden the operating system and help protect your server environment to ensure you have a solid foundation on which to build your business.

For more information, go to:
www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008

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

Document published February 2008