Microsoft UK Public Sector - Using Software - Infrastructure optimisation

The City of Edinburgh Council predicts savings of over £1m per annum on its recent infrastructure optimisation project. Reducing IT costs saves the bottom line and delivers funds back to frontline services. Sally Whittle finds out more.

Infrastructure optimisation will be a hot topic in 2009 because many organisations have grown in a heterogenous, relatively unplanned fashion, making for complex and inefficient infrastructures, says Clive Longbottom, a research director with Quocirca. “It’s absolutely the norm for organisations to have equipment from lots of different vendors, with standard Wintel servers next to Unix servers and J2EE running next to Cobol or .Net,” says Longbottom. “You might have 10Mb, 100Mb and 1Gb networks running next to each other, and point solutions all over the place.”

Research shows that an average large organisation will have up to five different versions of any one piece of software running, each one a slightly different version and configuration. It’s also common to have upwards of 50 Microsoft Exchange servers running in a large public sector institutional IT network.

The net result is that 70% of the typical IT budget goes on just keeping everything running. “To look at that another way, it means only 30% of the IT budget is being invested in helping the business,” says Longbottom. “So imagine if you could free up 20% or even 10% of that maintenance spend, how many services you would be able to deliver, particularly during a recession.”

Optimisation doesn’t necessarily mean investing in new technologies. Just taking a good look at what you already have can identify quick savings, says Longbottom. “If all you do is consolidate and rationalise all the different versions of software packages, you can save a heck of a lot of money in support costs,” he says.

Alternatively, infrastructure optimisation might involve moving to single supplier contracts in areas such as hardware (servers, routers, printers, storage). This can give better contract rates and further lower support costs, Longbottom says.

The City of Edinburgh Council recently completed an infrastructure optimisation programme with BT and Microsoft, which has massively simplified and consolidated the council’s IT systems. “We literally didn’t know how many computers we had, let alone how best to manage them,” says Andrew Unsworth, Head of e-Government with the City Council.

The Council worked with Microsoft to deliver the Microsoft Infrastructure Optimisation Model, a self-assessment tool that helps customers understand and subsequently improve their IT infrastructure, and describes what that means in terms for cost, risk and operational efficiency. The assessment evaluated the existing infrastructure and identified potential improvements. This audit suggested the council could reduce support costs on the desktop by 32 percent and server support by 72 percent. That’s hardly surprising considering the complexity of the existing infrastructure, says Unsworth. “We had an array of operating systems and equipment, and servers were distributed throughout the council, sometimes in inappropriate environments,” he says.

By standardising on HP computers and servers running Windows, consolidating email and desktop applications on Microsoft solutions, and rationalising the number of applications from 4,500 to just 400, the council has massively reduced desktop support costs. Today, 65% of support calls can be resolved in a single call, compared to just 8% previously. Broken PCs can now be fixed within four hours, compared to four or five days in the previous environment.

In the data centre, Edinburgh City Council used virtualisation to provide application server scalability, deploying Exchange Server for email and messaging, and a storage area network for greater efficiency and utilisation.

Edinburgh City Council shows just how significant the benefits of infrastructure optimisation can be. The project in the city has been a tremendous success, with a full return on investment expected in just 14 months. The optimisation saved £5 million in direct IT costs and over the next five years, the council expects to save £6.4 million.

If newer technologies are then added to the optimisation mix – such as virtualisation on top of blade computers – then utilisation rates can be driven from 10% to more than 50%, a massive saving in hardware costs, energy consumption and administration.

“The key thing is to bring in the right tools to monitor exactly what is happening,” advises Longbottom. “That doesn’t just mean archetypical systems management tools but tools that can look at software licenses, utilisation and so on, tools that can automate tasks like patch management, upgrades, and root cause analysis – where you can spot and suggest a solution for problems before they become major issues.”

Worcestershire Health ICT Services, which provides the IT infrastructure for the entire Worcestershire healthcare sector, used the Microsoft Infrastructure Optimisation Model to benchmarks its IT maturity and performance, and to identify areas where security, reliability and cost-effectiveness could be improved.

“We reduced the cost of maintaining PCs by about 10 percent within six months,” says John Thornbury, Director of ICT with Worcestershire Health ICT Services. “Costs were previously running at up to £600 a year for a single desktop, but through infrastructure optimisation these costs have been rationalised, releasing funds to deliver improvements in patient care.”

To get the best from infrastructure optimisation it’s vital to know what you already have, using tools to search out hardware assets and inventory software assets at a granular level. Make sure tools can automate the rollout of patches and upgrades – and can roll back if required. Finally, set out key success factors and build review points in to the project to ensure they are hit. “Know that pulling the plug when something is obviously wrong isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength,” says Longbottom. “Losing £100,000 is always better than losing £100 million, and still not having a working solution in place.”

Longbottom also advises IT leaders to keep the business informed during an infrastructure optimisation project to ensure the changes made reflect the business’ changing requirements. “Make sure you’re solving today’s problems, not the problems of six months ago,” he says. “Also make sure the business is aware of what you are trying to do and what they can expect to gain from it. So will they get some of that budget back in place on the bottom line, or will there be increased investment in new projects to meet business goals?”

Any organisation not looking at IT infrastructure optimisation this year will seriously struggle, Longbottom believes. A solid infrastructure is needed to provide a flexible environment to match business needs. During good economic times, a lot of problems could be solved by fire-fighting and additional investment. But during a recession, it becomes far more important for IT to be seen to be delivering value for money and good performance, Longbottom says. “It’s time for IT to get our house in order,” he says.

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Brighton-based Sally is a leading IT journalist with many years under her belt at titles including Computing and Information Week. She specialises in the public sector, training and HR.