Customer Solution Case Study
/ Standard Life Cuts Operating Costs with New Server Management System
Overview
Country or Region: United Kingdom
Industry: Financial services—Insurance industry
Customer Profile
Standard Life is one of the United Kingdom’s best known asset management companies, with 9,500 employees and around 1.5 million shareholders in more than 50 countries.
Business Situation
The company needed a best-of-breed server management solution to reduce operating costs while ensuring resilience for a hybrid physical and virtual estate of more than 700 servers.
Solution
After evaluating the performance and cost of various products on the market, Standard Life chose Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 with supporting software.
Benefits
· Reduced operating costs
· Faster server migration
· Good interoperability
· Possible future standardisation / “Microsoft has now succeeded in producing an enterprise server management solution that integrates with non-Microsoft environments, while reducing cost and improving capacity.”
Andrew Gordon, Senior Server Architect, Standard Life
Standard Life is a leading insurance specialist and asset management group based in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is listed on the London Stock Exchange. Needing to reduce operating costs, while deploying a best-of-breed infrastructure, the company evaluated a number of solutions. Standard Life chose Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 and deployed more than 700 physical and virtual servers in just eight weeks—far quicker than expected. IT managers estimate that the transformation will significantly reduce operating costs over three years and also provide a more stable and reliable infrastructure. The system management tools work well in a heterogeneous environment and Standard Life is evaluating pre-release Microsoft software for use outside the Microsoft estate for Linux and UNIX servers.
Situation
Standard Life, one of the United Kingdom’s best known insurance companies—based in Edinburgh, Scotland—is a major asset management group with about 7 million customers. Listed on the London Stock Exchange and one of the FTSE 100 Index top companies, Standard Life has around 8,500 employees in the U.K., plus 1.5 million shareholders in more than 50 countries. At 31 December 2008, Standard Life Investments managed £123 billion (U.S.$182 billion) of assets.
In common with most major players in financial services in the current economic climate, Standard Life is looking at strategies to reduce operating costs while investing in best-of-breed technology to increase the stability and reliability of its infrastructure.
Increased reliance on the Microsoft and Intel server environment led the group’s IT managers to seek a better system for managing Windows and Intel servers—specifically, the security auditing required to meet operational and compliance standards.
However, Standard Life had developed a highly virtualised server estate to reduce costs and improve performance. This was an important consideration since the company needed a cost-effective way of managing its VMware guests.
Andrew Gordon, Senior Server Architect at Standard Life, says: “We had previously evaluated Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 infrastructure management software, but it wasn’t the right product for us then. Two years later, the expansion in our Windows and Intel server estate led us to re-evaluate Microsoft for a best-of-breed management tool. We make extensive use of VMware’s server virtualisation and our long-term strategy was to deploy next-generation technology. Costs were, naturally, paramount, but just as important was to ensure that we had the right management tool for core monitoring of server performance to ensure peace of mind about the stability of our Windows estate.”
Solution
Standard Life, informed by research from analysts including Forrester Research and Gartner, evaluated Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 and concluded that the functionality of the product broadly met with its requirements.
Working with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Hewlett-Packard (HP) UK, the company carried out a proof of concept (POC) to test and analyse the improvements in System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 over previous versions of the product and to demonstrate its suitability for use within its environment.
Des McGuire, Lead Consultant, HP, says: The POC started in July 2007 with a pre-release version of System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2—and, as with pre-release versions of any software, issues were worked through to resolution with Microsoft. After a successful POC, Standard Life was confident in both the System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 solution and HP’s expertise in delivering System Center projects. Standard Life deployed the solution in April 2008.
Neil Cuthbertson, Head of Consulting and Integration (Scotland), HP, says: “Over the previous two-and-a-half years the number of Windows Servers at Standard Life had increased from 250 to more than 700. The proof of concept showed that with Operations Manager the estate would be four times cheaper to manage in the long run and a third of the cost to operate within three years.” HP is helping Standard Life define a road map for the product and is also providing HP hardware.
Alex Accarino, Senior Technician at Standard Life, adds: “However, the assessment also showed that aside from the cost consideration, the Microsoft solution provided greater accuracy and relevance in monitoring our products.”
Highly Virtualised Server Estate Influences Technology Choice
The management of a highly virtualised estate with 350 physical and 400 virtual servers was a key factor. System Center Operations Manager was considered to be the most cost-effective way for Standard Life to manage its VMware guests, even though the company is not traditionally a Microsoft house and uses several competitor technologies for critical systems:
· Novell for authentication and file and print services
· IBM WebSphere for the application layer
· Oracle for database management software
· Lotus Domino for e-mail messaging and collaboration
Standard Life chose Premier Support from Microsoft Services for technical backup and Microsoft Select Volume Licensing, which is suitable for organisations that have mixed software requirements. It offers a flexible and cost-effective way to make licensing purchases on a pay-as-you-go basis. An added advantage from a support point of view is that Premier Support customers have free technical assistance for VMware running in a Windows environment.
Standard Life is also evaluating Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Cross Platform Update—launched in a pre-release version in May 2008. It extends the monitoring capacity of the original software to open source technologies including Linux, IBM, and Sun Solaris. Standard Life is interested in this technology for managing its Linux and UNIX servers.
With the VMware virtual hosts also being licensed through the Server Management Suite, the management capability is further enhanced by being able to access configuration management, data protection control, and virtual machine management tools.
Microsoft has also delivered a pre-release version of the System Center Operations Manager 2007 Connectors, based on many of the same open source technology and standards as the Cross Platform Update. It provides Standard Life with integrated administration and the ability to interoperate and exchange System Center Operations Manager monitoring data with other IT management tools such as IBM Tivoli.
Benefits
Standard Life has improved monitoring of its hybrid physical and virtual server estate at a lower cost and with faster deployment than would have been achieved with other comparable solutions. The deployment delivers management of heterogeneous software from a single location across several environments. Gordon says: “Microsoft has now succeeded in producing an enterprise server management solution that integrates with non-Microsoft environments, while reducing cost and improving capacity.”
Server Management Tool to Cut Costs over Three Years
The business case for implementing System Center Operations Manager projected significant savings although these alone were not the principal driver behind the change. Gordon says: “Over a three-year period, we’re projecting significant savings in operating costs, but our main concern is better management of our Windows estate.”
Around 700 Servers Migrated to New System in Eight Weeks
Speed of deployment was critical for a business such as Standard Life whose reputation depends on providing highly responsive services to its customers worldwide. Gordon says: “We wanted to have peace of mind about the performance of our Windows estate by improving the core monitoring. It was so easy to deploy that we managed to roll out the solution to more than 700 servers in just eight weeks. We would not have achieved that with any other system.”
Microsoft System Interoperates with Other Vendor Technologies
Because the Engyro Product Connector is part of System Center Operations Manager, the solution gave Standard Life bi-directional reporting and updating of action items between Operations Manager and its Tivoli environment. Gordon says that previously the functionality was only in one direction.
The Engyro Product Connector supports bi-directional alert/event synchronisation from an unlimited number of Operations Manager managed nodes and groups. It also provides support for integration between Operations Manager and other event management systems.
Such has been the success of the project that Standard Life in the U.K. is now seeking to extend the use of System Center Operations Manager outside the Windows and Intel estate and is evaluating System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Cross Platform Update for managing its Linux and UNIX servers.
Managers Hope to Standardise on Tool Across Group
According to Gordon, Standard Life in Canada has also deployed the latest version of System Center Operations Manager, alongside the U.K. “We are looking to adopt common tooling with our colleagues in Canada and hope in time to adopt Microsoft tools for server management on a global basis,” he says.
Microsoft System Center
System Center solutions help IT pros manage the physical and virtual information technology (IT) environments across data centres, client computers, and devices. Using these integrated and automated management solutions, IT organisations can be more productive service providers to their businesses.
For more information on Microsoft System Center, please visit:
www.microsoft.com/systemcenter