Swisscom is a major telecommunications company in Switzerland that provides telephone, Internet, digital TV, and IT services. Its smaller customers wanted advanced unified communications (UC) capabilities but could not afford the on-premises infrastructure. Swisscom hired WinWorkers, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and Microsoft System Center specialist, to create a managed UC service. For an affordable monthly fee, customers get on-premises UC servers that are owned and managed by Swisscom. To deploy the customer-premise servers and deliver a centralized, multitenant-capable management infrastructure, WinWorkers used Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V technology and Microsoft System Center solutions. Swisscom got a new revenue-generating service to market in just two months, and Swisscom customers have gained UC services at an affordable price.

Situation
Swisscom is a major telecommunications provider in Switzerland, with 5.8 million mobile customers and around 1.6 million broadband connections. Swisscom offers a full range of products and services for mobile, landline, and IP-based voice and data communication. It also offers IT outsourcing services for business customers. In the first nine months of 2010, the company's more than 19,500 employees generated revenues of CHF8.98 billion (U.S.$9 billion).

With this new service, our customers get a full suite of modern collaboration services with no investment in servers, software, or management staff. Andreas Arrigoni Head of Collaboration Services, Corporate Business Division, Swisscom

While thousands of business customers host key applications in Swisscom hosting facilities, they had to run other applications on-premises for security or legal reasons. For example, many customers that used unified communications (UC) technology such as Microsoft Lync Server 2010 (previously Microsoft Office Communica-tions Server) for presence and instant messaging needed to keep instant-messaging conversations on-premises. They also needed local connectivity to their Active Directory Domain Services directory structure.

Still other customers, notably small and midsize organizations, could not take advantage of enterprise-caliber applications such as those for unified communications and customer relationship management (CRM) because they simply could not afford the on-premises infrastructure.

Customers large and small—those with on-premises applications and those desiring them—petitioned Swisscom to offer a managed on-premises service, whereby Swisscom would lease servers and applications to them and manage the equipment and applications for them. “We wanted to help customers with all their IT management needs, including maintaining their on-premises infrastructures,” says Andreas Arrigoni, Head of Collaboration Services in the Corporate Business Division at Swisscom. “But to create a viable managed on-premises service, we needed to figure out how to efficiently set up and manage thousands of customer-premises servers and applications. We had many customers desiring this service, which would mean managing tens of thousands of servers and desktop devices connected to those servers. That would require very sophisticated, multitenant management software.” In a multitenant management environment, Swisscom would manage hundreds or thousands of customer servers through a single management environment.

Solution
Swisscom called in WinWorkers, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and member of the Microsoft System Center Alliance, for help in designing and setting up its first managed on-premises solution, called Managed Communications and Collaboration. WinWorkers, based in Zurich, specializes in Microsoft System Center management and virtualization technologies and has subsidiaries in four countries.

The Swisscom Managed Communications and Collaboration solution would include customer-premises servers running Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, and Microsoft Lync Server 2010 to provide integrated telephony, email, instant messaging, text messaging, video conferencing, and collaboration sites. It would also include monitoring and management of these servers and applications by Swisscom from its Bern data center.

Private Cloud Technologies
To quickly and cost-effectively deploy the management infrastructure, Swisscom decided to create a “private cloud” in its data center, whereby virtualized management services could be dynamically configured behind its secure firewall. It already used VMware ESX to virtualize servers in its web hosting business and considered using it for its managed on-premises service. However, WinWorkers solution architects persuaded Swisscom that the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system with Hyper-V technology was more cost-effective and offered easier and more flexible management options.

To create a viable managed on-premises service, we needed to figure out how to efficiently set up and manage thousands of customer-premises servers and applications. Andreas Arrigoni Head of Collaboration Services, Corporate Business Division, Swisscom

“After creating a business plan for the new service, we realized that we would need dozens or hundreds of management servers and knew that we needed a cost-effective solution with a great deal of flexibility,” Arrigoni says. “We chose Hyper-V and System Center because they met these needs, and also because all the applications we would be managing were Microsoft applications.”

Additionally, by using Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, Swisscom would be able to manage both customer-premises and Swisscom-hosted servers, and both physical and virtual servers, through a common console. System Center Virtual Machine Manager provides automated templates and wizards for creating and managing virtual machines, a console for centrally managing all physical and virtual assets, performance troubleshooting tools, and many other server management capabilities.

Microsoft had also just come out with the Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal 2.0, which enables easy creation and management of virtual machines over the web. This portal adds workflow capabilities to System Center Virtual Machine Manager to enable rapid activation (or “on-boarding”) of end users, pooling of resources, usage tracking and billing, and self-service provisioning. It is a free* solution that helps companies implement a private cloud and automates the process of on-boarding users and provisioning IT resources.

Multitenant Management Console
The key challenge to making the new service viable was delivering a multitenant-capable System Center management infrastructure with which Swisscom could manage multiple customers through a single console. Using the Windows PowerShell command-line interface and the System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal, WinWorkers accomplished this task in just three months. “The portal helped shortcut the development time significantly—from eight months to three months,” says Roland Hübinger, Chief Executive Officer of WinWorkers. “The whole project simply would not have been possible otherwise.”

In addition to modifying System Center solutions to monitor and manage thousands of customer environments through a single console, WinWorkers created an interface between System Center and the Swisscom billing system. With this, Swisscom can pull usage data from the customer-premises UC applications and its own System Center applications to bill customers automatically and according to their application use.

Swisscom runs its private-cloud management environment on a virtualized infrastructure. The customer on-premises services run on one physical server with up to 30 virtual machines depending on customer requirements and purchased services. It runs both the Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter and Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise operating systems in the solution. As Swisscom adds new customers, it can easily and cost-effectively scale its System Center infrastructure, rapidly deploying new virtual machines by using the System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal.

Swisscom and WinWorkers launched the Swisscom Unified Communications development project in June 2010 and completed it three months later. Swisscom licenses Microsoft System Center products through the Microsoft System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise and the Microsoft Services Provider License Agreement.

Automated Customer Setup
When a customer signs up for Swisscom Unified Communications, Swisscom asks the customer how many users will be using the service and where they are located, and obtains their Active Directory service credentials. It then determines how many servers the customer will need. Technicians configure the Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Lync Server roles using Hyper-V to create virtual machines where possible.

Technicians use Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 to deploy the operating systems and applications to the servers, and Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 to install monitoring agents. All customer-premises servers are protected by Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010, and all customer client computers are protected with Microsoft Forefront Client Security. All customer data is backed up on customer premises by Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2010. Once the servers are fully configured, technicians install them at the customer site and establish network connectivity between those servers and the Swisscom management console.

Customers can view online reports on usage, quality of experience, uptime, and billing using a customized view of the System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal.

Benefits
By offering a managed on-premises communications service, Swisscom was able to give smaller customers access to enterprise-caliber unified communications at an affordable monthly price. By building the service using Hyper-V and System Center, Swisscom was able to get the new service to market in just three months—and create a foundation on which new services can be added.

Customers Gain Affordable Communications Services
By subscribing to Swisscom Managed Communications and Collaboration, small and midsize companies can obtain cutting-edge unified communications capabilities that they would otherwise not be able to afford. “With this new service, our customers get a full suite of modern collaboration services with no investment in servers, software, or management staff,” Arrigoni says. “Plus, customers get excellent help-desk support—all for a low, per-user monthly bill.”

The [Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal] helped shortcut the development time significantly—from eight months to three months. Roland Hübinger Chief Executive Officer, WinWorkers

They also get these services very quickly. Today, Swisscom needs four weeks to deploy its Managed Communications and Collaboration service at a customer site but is aiming to reduce deployment time to three days. “If a customer opted for their own on-premises infrastructure, they would easily need two to three months to install all this,” Arrigoni says.

New Service Created in Three Months
In just three months, WinWorkers was able to extend System Center to support a multitenant service management and delivery infrastructure, and Swisscom was able to offer a brand new service to thousands of customers that needed help managing on-premises IT installations. “The fact that we used the full suite of System Center products gave Swisscom a rapid time-to-market,” Hübinger says. “At a relatively small cost, we were able to create an enterprise-scale unified communications solution, and do so faster and less expensively than we could have using VMware.

“Swisscom also has far better monitoring than it would have had with VMware. In those three months, we were able to configure monitoring for 40 different types of devices; I don’t think we could have done that using any other solution. We definitely couldn’t have delivered it as quickly. With any other technology, development would have taken two years.”

Solution Leads to New Revenue
Since introducing Swisscom Unified Communications, Swisscom has been selling about 20 installations a month and expects dozens of customers to sign up for the service next year. With its private cloud management infrastructure in place, Swisscom can also manage customer client devices, as well as servers—another convenience for customers and another revenue source for Swisscom.

“The beauty of this system is that everything is fully automated,” Arrigoni says. “By using System Center, we can quickly deploy servers for multiple customers from the same web console in our data center. Everything from deploying security updates to forwarding server monitoring alerts to the help desk to customer billing is completely automated. With this solution, we will be able to deploy, manage, and patch servers for as many as 11,000 customers.”

Additional Services Can Be Added Cost-Effectively
Swisscom also can sell additional managed on-premises services to customers using the same management infrastructure. “We are thinking of using this same model to provide CRM services and other vertical solutions,” Arrigoni says. “There are no limits to what we can do with this environment. We can deliver just about any application to end users, using a hosted or on-premises model. We can deploy security updates and new software releases to thousands of customer installations with push-button simplicity.”

By taking advantage of the attractive suite-licensing price of System Center, Swisscom can offer unified communications and additional services to customers at low prices. “By using System Center and Hyper-V, we can quickly and cost-effectively scale our hardware without any major business impact,” Arrigoni says. “System Center is an enterprise-proven platform. No other private cloud technology can scale as far as System Center can.”

*Access to and use of the Internet may require payment of a separate fee to an Internet service provider. Local and/or long-distance telephone charges may apply.

Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization
With infrastructure optimization, you can build a secure, well-managed, and dynamic core IT infrastructure that can reduce overall IT costs, make better use of resources, and become a strategic asset for the business. The Infrastructure Optimization model—with basic, standardized, rationalized, and dynamic levels—was developed by Microsoft using industry best practices and Microsoft’s own experiences with enterprise customers. The Infrastructure Optimization model provides a maturity framework that is flexible and easily used as a benchmark for technical capability and business value.

For more information about Microsoft infrastructure optimization, go to:
www.microsoft.com/io  

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 in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. 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 WinWorkers products and services, call (41) (44) 718 4000 or visit the website at:
www.winworkers.com

For more information about Swisscom products and services visit the website at:
www.swisscom.ch/corporatebusiness