Service Incidents Reduced by 60 Percent

• More efficient IT processes
• Service incidents reduced by 60 percent
• Better user experience
• Complete transparency of IT services

Situation

Bluarancio is the IT arm of Coldiretti, a large association of Italian farms and food processing companies. Its services include IT consulting, application hosting, system integration, infrastructure management and monitoring, and portal-based access to all necessary applications for thousands of Coldiretti members located across Italy. Coldiretti users include farmers and employees of food processing and manufacturing companies.

After consolidating three server farms into a single data center containing 180 servers and managed by just 10 people, Bluarancio turned its attention to automating manual processes and creating new service management policies based on industry best standards. Its goal was to define centralized, integrated, and formalized IT management processes so it could make its small staff as efficient as possible.

“We do not have formal service-level agreements with Coldiretti, but we are always working to improve operational efficiency and increase customer satisfaction,” says Alberto Olivetti, IT Manager at Bluarancio. In 2009, Bluarancio deployed Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 to gain centralized monitoring of its servers and applications. However, it relied on a third-party company to monitor network security and other network elements, and it was difficult for the Bluarancio staff to integrate this external company’s data with its own to provide swift response to users. Bluarancio also had no insight into the parts of its network monitored by this external company.

“We wanted a single management, monitoring, and control panel from which we could see everything in our network,” says Donato Pasqualicchio, IT Service Manager for Bluarancio. “We also wanted to bring the work done by the external monitoring company in-house if possible, because their fees were very high.”

Another key goal was to reduce the number of help-desk incidents called in by Coldiretti users and speed the resolution of these incidents. If the Bluarancio help desk could not resolve a problem, the technician escalated the problem to the Bluarancio IT or development staff. The help-desk workload varied through the year, with the busiest period being spring through summer, harvest time, when farmers were selling their crops and generating paperwork. During this period, the Bluarancio IT staff spent a full 60 percent of its time resolving user incidents, up from the normal—and still high—20 percent.

Often, System Center Operations Manager identified a problem with an application or server before users did. However, the Bluarancio staff did not have a way to automate the ensuing workflow. The IT staff notified the service owner, customer contact, and Bluarancio staff—as many as 50 people—by email or phone that the server was down or not performing well. Because of the manual steps and number of people involved, it took from one hour to three or four days to resolve an incident.

Finally, Bluarancio wanted to speed the delivery of new IT services to users and better document changes made to its IT infrastructure. If a Coldiretti business user wanted a new application installed on his or her PC, he or she sent an email message to the IT staff, which forwarded it to up to 20 people for approval, both to install the application and document the change to the IT infrastructure.

Solution

Because Bluarancio runs the Windows Server operating system on its servers and already uses System Center Operations Manager, it was natural for the company to look at Microsoft System Center Service Manager 2010, a software tool that connects with System Center solutions to provide a desktop-to–datacenter view of IT services. System Center Service Manager takes data such as configuration errors and alerts and automatically creates and tracks incident reports. Bluarancio deployed System Center Service Manager 2010 with Service Pack 1 in June 2010, on three IBM servers running the Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise operating system.

Visual Service Mapping

Bluarancio engaged Microsoft Services in Italy to create a connector between System Center Operations Manager and System Center Service Manager and to train its staff. “The first step was to redefine our internal processes for all IT-related services, which we did using the IT Infrastructure Library [ITIL] and Microsoft Operations Framework best practices,” Olivetti says. “We also used a service relationships mapping manager tool developed for Bluarancio by Microsoft Italy.”

With this tool, Bluarancio can see its services map in a visual way that makes it simpler to see an end-to-end view and manage the impact analysis. “We implemented and automated these processes using System Center Operations Manager and System Center Service Manager, but the mapping tool helped us see the technologies and servers that needed to be linked to create business services,” Olivetti says. “It made the whole process faster and enabled us to fully document each service.”

Incident Management

With System Center Service Manager, Bluarancio has a tool that supports its ITIL processes and automates many management chores. For example, when System Center Operations Manager detects a server problem, it sends an alert to System Center Service Manager, which automatically creates a service incident and forwards it to a technician. Automated linkage eliminates the opportunity for human error in transcribing data between systems and gives technicians all the information they need in one place. It also eliminates the need to send email messages to 20 people and wait for their coordinated response.

That one place where technicians can find needed information is the Service Manager Configuration Management Database (CMDB), which is a repository of information related to every component in the Bluarancio data center. It provides a history of all the changes that Bluarancio has made to its IT environment, which is something Bluarancio never had before.

Change Management

System Center Service Manager similarly streamlines the change-management process. Instead of sending email messages to the IT staff when they want applications installed on their PCs, Coldiretti users submit requests using the System Center Service Manager Self-Service Portal, which automatically routes the request to the correct people. The Self-Service Portal also contains a knowledge base that users can consult to resolve some of their own PC issues.

Bluarancio uses Opalis, an IT infrastructure orchestration tool that is part of System Center, to round out its process automation and service management toolkit. With Opalis, the IT staff can automate common infrastructure tasks that were previously performed manually, such as creating new user credentials, resetting passwords, and creating new email accounts. With the 2012 System Center releases, Opalis will be renamed Microsoft System Center Orchestrator.

Bluarancio was able to eliminate the third-party monitoring service with the new capabilities it gained from System Center.

Benefits

Bluarancio has gained greater IT efficiency, faster problem resolution, and better service delivery by deploying Microsoft System Center solutions. All these benefits translate into better customer service for its customer Coldiretti.

More Efficient IT Processes

By using System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 and System Center Service Manager 2010 with SP1, Bluarancio has been able to centralize and formalize the management of its IT infrastructure and the corresponding services that it supports.

“In a complex information system consisting of many different applications and technologies, it is important to have a single monitoring, management, and control system for optimizing IT services to make them increasingly efficient and ensure that they meet Coldiretti expectations,” says Carlo Degirolamo, Chief Executive Officer of Bluarancio.

Olivetti adds, “Operations inside our server farm are now automated and defined with the utmost precision. Application services are monitored end-to-end, and their quality is clearly measurable. Critical factors such as CPU and storage usage are constantly monitored to make it possible to intervene proactively and avoid impinging on users’ experience.” For the first time, Bluarancio can measure its service levels, and today is delivering a level of about 97 percent.

Better User Experience

A well-tuned data center is evident to users when applications perform well, email systems operate without interruption, and problems are resolved quickly. “We can detect potential problems so much faster and usually take care of them before they affect users,” Pasqualicchio says. “Also, the Self-Service Portal has really accelerated our ability to service users’ needs. Users can submit requests for new applications or ask for help in solving problems, and can track our progress in responding. Users have never had such visibility into our efforts on their behalf, and it helps raise the visibility of the IT department in a good way. Instead of waiting for 20 people to coordinate a response, we have workflows that can provide an immediate approval or denial and install an application automatically.”

The more proactive Bluarancio is in monitoring its infrastructure, the more able it is to take corrective measures as soon as a danger sign surfaces—maybe an overheating processor or failed server fan—and make repairs to avoid service disruptions. “Today, users perceive the IT infrastructure as a fully reliable system,” Olivetti says. “Their satisfaction with the quality of the services offered by Bluarancio is a source of great pride for us, and confirms the importance of a solid infrastructure management platform.”

Service Incidents Reduced by 60 Percent

Since deploying System Center Service Manager, Bluarancio has reduced the number of service incidents from 2,000 to about 800 annually, a 60 percent reduction. “Our staff is freed to do higher-value projects such as upgrading to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, or identifying new applications to make users more productive,” Pasqualicchio says.

The team has achieved similarly impressive speedups in processing change requests. “It takes a fraction of the time to manage the change process,” Pasqualicchio says. “We have cut the time for basic operations, such as removing a user from an Active Directory group, from four hours down to four seconds. This leaves more time to address other problems.”

By eliminating the third-party monitoring service, Bluarancio has reducedmonitoring costs by approximately 70 percent.

Complete Transparency of IT Services

Bluarancio has achieved its initial goal of maximizing service levels for Coldiretti and creating a single monitoring and managing platform across its entire infrastructure. Bluarancio has even given Coldiretti business users a view into the health of critical applications by providing System Center Service Manager dashboards. “Our colleagues at Coldiretti know everything about the status of IT incidents and changes; we can now provide full transparency,” Olivetti says. “Management can see the real-time health state of all IT services in real time, in clear, standardized reports. This has made Bluarancio a better and more appreciated business partner to Coldiretti.”

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: