Capgemini UK (change)

This section includes:

• The Benefits of Infrastructure Management
• Capgemini’s Approach
• Capgemini’s Capabilities
• Success Stories

Benefits of Infrastructure Management

Organisations will see a number of benefits from effective Infrastructure management, including:

• Reduced operational costs.
• Improved quality of service.
• Improved capabilities, enabling business to do more.
• Better control to outsource service provision.
• Better planning and portfolio management and asset management.
• Consolidation of networking and technology, especially during post-merger or post-acquisition integration.
• The ability to supplement internal skills.

Capgemini’s Approach

Our consultants work on the largest and most complex infrastructures leading to real-world experience coupled with business awareness enables us to consult at all levels of the organisation. We have developed methods and accelerators that make best use of our infrastructure experience. Our Infrastructure Development Framework (IDF) is based on our acclaimed Integrated Architecture Framework (IAF) and our Network Strategy Review process has been successfully applied to dozens of complex engagements.

An organisations infrastructure is the foundation for its IT systems and therefore for its effective operation. Our consultants work on the largest and most complex infrastructures: Aspire, Metropolitan Police, BP. This real-world experience coupled with business awareness enables us to consult at all levels of the organisation. We have developed methods and accelerators that make best use of Capgemin’s infrastructure experience.

Our Infrastructure Development Framework (IDF) is built upon Capgemin’s acclaimed IAF methodology which is also the basis of the Open Group TOGAF architecture framework.

The Infrastructure Design Framework covers the full development life cycle of ICT Infrastructure platforms and services. The Infrastructure domain consists of seven technology areas: Server, Network, Storage, Middleware, Security, System Management and an overarching area: Integration.

IDF is broken down into seven major phases:

1. Plan and Organise to define the objectives, scope, constraints and deliverables of the project.
2. Analysis to produce a clear statement of business requirements.
3. High Level Design based on agreed requirements, principles and standards.
4. Detailed Design using selected technologies.
5. Migration and Implementation Planning.
6. Implementation.
7. Operate or management of the service.

With this methodology, Capgemini clients have gained many benefits that include:

• Clear understanding between all stockholders about the project and approach.
• A structured and manageable infrastructure development process that clients can validate.
• Vendor neutral consultancy and architecture.
• Standardised high quality designs and documentation.
• Implementation with reduced risks.
• Smooth operations based on real world experience.

Capgemini Capabilities

Capgemini’s Infrastructure services are a 50/50 balance of project work and consultancy. Our specific capabilities include expertise in:

• Infrastructure Strategy and roadmap development, including strategy for sustainable green IT.
• Networking.
• Mobility consulting: from strategy and business case through to the architecture and design of mobile infrastructure.
• Data centre configuration and optimisation
• Virtualisation.
• Sustainable IT.
• Network Convergence strategy & business cases including traditional telephony, IP Telephony and VoIP.
• Converged Network Architecture and Design.
• Converged Network Vendor Selection (RFP/ITT).
• Infrastructure audit.
• Business case development.
• Infrastructure Architecture and Design (Servers, Storage, Networks).
• Gap analysis.
• Change implementation.
• Disaster Recovery Consultancy and the Architecture and design of DR Solutions.

Success Stories

Major Oil and Gas Supplier

Capgemini is has worked collaboratively with the organisation over a period of 2 years to define a comprehensive global strategy, architecture and design for the remediation of their existing TDM voice infrastructure over to a cohesive global IPT infrastructure rolling out over a 3-5 year timeframe. Covering some 70,000 voice users across the globe, the work involved market analysis & strategy development, product analysis and selection, financial modelling, site-type classification & associated hardware specification, numbering plans, RFP development and processing, and project management of core datacentre deployments of Cisco Callmanager infrastructure. In association with the global voice programme, Capgemini designed and project managed a 100 user technology pilot to examine the suitability of Microsoft OCS as the company’s future global collaboration tool.

Expanding European retailer

This retailer with stores across the UK, Ireland, Scandinavia and continental Europe had recently acquired a competitor which will increase its store count by some 50%. The organisation decided to use the integration of the businesses as an opportunity to radically overhaul its systems from tills to finance and from management reporting through warehousing/ logistics.

Although the Refresh programme team had performed an early review of scaling implications for its existing and replacement systems, the CIO still felt the need for an independent analysis particularly of the newly developed systems the team were responsible for. Capgemini was able to offer systems specialists who could demonstrate an approach which not only addressed the key technical bottlenecks but argued this could be presented in a format where the implications could be clearly understood by the Board.

The CIO was keen to perform this analysis over the Christmas peak trading period when systems would be running at maximum however this presented a challenge in that most key staff were committed to keeping systems available. At the same time a number of key staff succumbed to a winter virus during the fortnight making data collection even more challenging. To workaround this Capgemini consultants sought direct access to reporting tools and the core mainframe system itself to collect essential statistics.

They were able to verify that the simplistic store-count increase would actually increase transactions by nearly 60%, but phased slightly away from the peak trading of the main business. They also identified that incremental growth of just over 10% per annum needed to factored despite the recession. In terms of the systems, they also identified among other findings the specific job in the overnight batch critical path that had to be addressed to ensure store replenishment would not be impacted by growth of the business; and finally allowed the CIO to demonstrate to the Board that store procedures were not only constraining IT service delivery to other parts of the business, but also the stores’ own ability to move to Just In Time replenishment.

Major Television Programme Maker

Programme-makers now operate a much more intense cycle of planning and sales. Ideas for new programmes go through a rapid process of review and costing, and are then advertised to an international market. Orders for a programme are taken long before the first scene is filmed. So if the costings aren’t right, the production will be unprofitable right from the first day of shooting.

From 2006 onwards, the demands on the cost planning component of financial systems increased out of all expectation as the ageing 1999 hardware was at times overloaded by a factor of x5 and x10. The lack of capacity meant that programmes were being sold with inaccurate financial analysis and increasingly, either overpriced and uncompetitive, or underpriced and unprofitable. The implementation of a completely new financials environment was underway, but this wouldn’t come on-stream until late 2008.

Capgemini decided that three areas should be researched firstly, general best practice for any eBiz implementation; secondly, the impact of the costing jobs and finally, the potential to replace the ageing hardware with better price-performance systems.

Working with the company’s personnel, they reviewed the Best Practice recommendations. Talking to both end-users and developers, they also characterised the nature of the batch jobs that the costing users were running. In tandem, they also worked with Sun, HP, Oracle and the company to review the infrastructure.

Personnel from a number of different Capgemini groups came together to work effectively as a single team, in partnership with the company. They took what was a serious technology problem, affecting programme production and, in just a few months, returned significant and cost-effective service improvements and optimisations. They laid the foundations for a completely new infrastructure for an associated Finance Transformation programme, and in the interim, provided an effective DR capability, where none existed before.