Wakefield Metropolitan District Council is leading the modernisation drive in United Kingdom public services by delivering real benefits for employees and citizens through its Worksmart change programme. Wakefield needed to upgrade its collaboration and communications servers to better support service delivery and flexible ways of working for employees. Through its Microsoft® Services Premier Support agreement, Wakefield acquired a resilient Microsoft solution delivered by managed services using Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Wakefield is deploying the latest technologies to support Worksmart. It will contribute to more than £4 million (U.S.$7.9 million) in revenue savings, and has already reduced carbon emissions by 35 tons in the IT team as a result of home working, and savings of 127,000 annual commuting miles.

Situation

One of five metropolitan districts in West Yorkshire in the north of England, Wakefield Metropolitan District Council provides a wide range of services to 318,000 people in both rural and urban areas. As a rapidly improving authority, Wakefield has adopted an organisational transformation programme called Worksmart, to modernise the way council officers and elected members work together to deliver services.

Michael O’Malley, Systems and Technical Manager, Wakefield Metropolitan District Council, says: “Worksmart is delivering real benefits for citizens, employees, and the council. The integrated programme is rationalising the council’s property portfolio, improving staff productivity, and providing a modern, fit-for-purpose workspace.”

Wakefield has embedded knowledge from its involvement in the Microsoft® Shared Learning Group, involving 11 U.K. local authorities, into an overall council-wide approach to technology infrastructure. It is now developing further capacity based on its Worksmart experiences to improve employee productivity whether from the office, from home, or remotely.

In the last quarter of 2006, Wakefield looked for solutions to the technical challenges with its existing communication and collaboration system based on Microsoft Exchange Server 2000. O’Malley says: “We were experiencing technical challenges—retrieving data took us days following an outage of just two hours due to an external power failure in October 2006. We naturally considered upgrading to Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, but with just our own resources we could not see any way of delivering a complete solution by our target date of the end of 2007.”

However, in November 2006, Wakefield had signed a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) for low-cost volume licensing with a Microsoft Services Premier Support contract, which gave the council its own Technical Account Manager (TAM) Nigel Crewe. This proved a critical turning point for Wakefield. The authority was due to undertake a major relocation project for its critical business support systems in July 2007, and took the opportunity divide them between two sites for greater resilience and improved capacity for disaster recovery.

Solution

Microsoft Services advised Wakefield to migrate directly to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 rather than take an interim step with Exchange Server 2003. “We did pre-sales engagement with technology specialists in Exchange Server 2007 and addressed their concerns about going straight to the latest version,” says Crewe. “The council wanted us to do the deployment so Microsoft Services did the design and discovery piece. For implementation we used Wakefield’s in-house IT resources alongside a dedicated support engineer for three months.

As a result of discussions around the Enterprise Agreement, Wakefield adjusted the number of support hours and built up its knowledge of the backup needed to undertake the planned upgrade. The project was completed on schedule and went live in January 2008 with a 64-bit architecture. A 64-bit system processes more data per clock cycle than 32-bit systems, ensuring more scalable, higher performing computing solutions. Employees can now access their e-mail, calendar and tasks far more efficiently than before.

O’Malley says: “Through our Microsoft TAM we resolved all our concerns about the migration to Exchange Server 2007. He communicated them to Microsoft, which brought back people who could address all our concerns and problems.”

The roadmap agreed with the TAM also included a review of the existing Active Directory® service deployment to improve the set up and use of Windows® SharePoint® Services. Operational processes have been improved with the introduction of the following Microsoft technologies:

• Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007—a tool to assess, deploy, and update servers, clients and devices across physical, virtual, distributed, and mobile environments.
• Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007—offers a vertical, complete, managed solution for backup and recovery.
• Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007—a complete service management solution that increases efficiency and gives better monitoring control of an IT environment.

Premier Support proved essential when, in July 2007, the council moved 120 servers over a weekend between two buildings 11 miles apart. Previously, the council had only one data centre. “The design was for a dual-site redundant architecture where data is copied from a building in Pontefract to a site in Wakefield in real time using Microsoft Exchange 2007 Continuous Cluster Replication,” says O’Malley. “In the event of a disaster on the main site, the Wakefield site will automatically bring itself into full operation and seize control of the Exchange Server 2007 system. The Microsoft support team was on standby throughout the move. We didn’t experience any problems, but Microsoft took the initiative in offering backup—a true sign of a maturing business partnership.”

Benefits

Microsoft Services is providing the key technical support for Wakefield’s Worksmart change transformation programme that is destined to save the council millions of pounds and support its “green” sustainability agenda. The council’s employees now have improved access to their business-critical e-mail and other systems through the Internet from home or remote locations.

Premier Support Helps Worksmart Deliver £4 Million Savings
Wakefield’s Premier Support agreement is a key driver behind the success of the council’s ambitions for its Worksmart change programme. “Helped by Microsoft Services Support, Worksmart will help save the authority more than £4 million (U.S.$7.9 million) in revenue savings, and produce £7.3 million of capital receipts from asset disposals,” according to  O’Malley. The authority will reduce the number of its administrative buildings from 34 to six, including a new civic building, and better support service delivery to citizens and flexible ways of working for council officers.

O’Malley says: “Migrating to Exchange Server 2007 was critical for the Worksmart programme because Exchange Server is fundamental to how our people work. The problems we experienced in 2006 brought home to people how much they rely on e-mail messaging. It’s part of the organisation’s culture. As part of the Worksmart initiative, we’re now also looking at using devices running Windows Mobile 6.”

Microsoft Support Helps Shrink Council’s e-Services Carbon Footprint
Gains of 15 per cent have already been made in productivity in some services through home working by using Exchange Server 2007, with cashable savings of £81,000 a year in the council’s e-Services unit alone. O’Malley says: “Employees working from home or in remote locations can log on to their critical systems though the Internet. We are shifting to a clear desk and minimum paper environment. As part of the relocation, 81 per cent of e-Services employees have adopted some level of home working.”

Lee Whitehouse, Technical Support Manager, Wakefield Metropolitan District Council says: “127,000 annual commuting miles will be saved as a result of home working by e-Services alone, with a reduction in carbon emissions of 35 tons of carbon dioxide per year. Flexible working has cut the amount of petrol we consume. We’ve saved square footage in terms of space, making the operation more sustainable, and the new data centres have new energy-efficient power units.”

Other benefits include:

• Fixed workstations cut by 34 per cent—79 to 52.
• Telephone landlines reduced by 55 per cent—42 to 19.
• Office space cut by 32 per cent—811 to 551 square metres.
• Office space per person reduced by 56 per cent—9.90 to 4.33 square metres.
• Office occupancy increased by 156 per cent—previously supporting 56 employees, now supporting 144.

Knowledge Transfer Benefits Council In-House Exchange Maintenance Team
One of the key objectives of the Premier Support agreement was knowledge transfer to Wakefield’s in-house Information and Communications Technology (ICT) team. Previously, Wakefield only had one technician familiar with Exchange Server—now there are three.

O’Malley says: “The dedicated support engineer set up briefing sessions for the helpdesk people who weren’t involved in the server project, which helped them to understand administration of Exchange Server 2007. The in-house team interviewed the design people to discover how and why they came up with the architecture map, and shared best practices. All in all, the in-house team learned a great deal just by sitting next to people who sleep and breathe Microsoft products.”

Greater Resilience Gives Managers Peace of Mind over Disaster Recovery
Before the move to split sites and the implementation of Exchange Server 2007, Wakefield’s ICT managers had concerns about the capacity to manage disaster recovery. “We should now never again experience the problems we encountered in 2006, when our e-mail system failed due to environmental problems caused by a massive external power failure,” says O’Malley. “We have improved our resilience and have shifted to a 64-bit architecture, which offers direct access to far more virtual and physical memory than 32-bit systems.”

Technical Account Manager Role Improves Customer Satisfaction at Wakefield
Although Wakefield’s e-Services is highly rated for its competence in ICT, Microsoft TAM Nigel Crewe is playing a critical role in building customer satisfaction and confidence about the delivery of the council’s technology roadmap. He is ensuring that Microsoft offers unified messaging about its products into the council and makes best use of the products available under its EA.

O’Malley says: “Nigel has never got less than a satisfied rating on the Microsoft Customer Satisfaction Measurement survey. He listens to what we want to achieve, understands the pace at which we can move on, and makes sure we have access to the relevant people at Microsoft. He has also been instrumental in advising us on what we should do with our proactive hours, which we manage and discuss as part of the service delivery planning process within the Premier Support Agreement”.

Microsoft Services

Microsoft Services helps customers and partners discover and implement high-value Microsoft solutions that generate rapid, meaningful, and measurable results. As the consulting, technical support, and customer service arm of the world’s leading software company, Microsoft Services enables the successful adoption, deployment, and use of Microsoft solutions and technologies for all customers, from the individual to the enterprise.

For more information about Microsoft Services, please visit:
www.microsoft.com/microsoftservices 

For More Information

For further information about Microsoft products and services, please visit
www.microsoft.com/uk

or call 0870 60 10 100*

For hearing impaired customers with a Minicom, contact: 0870 50 30 400*

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For more information about Wakefield Metropolitan District Council products and services, call +44 (0)1977 727666 or visit the Web site at:
www.wakefield.gov.uk

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

Document published March 2008

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