Removing cost and complexity from the IT estate

Background

A major UK retail bank was facing increasing costs and inflexibility due to the organic growth of its server estate.  This had reached a scale where new data centres were being planned to accommodate growth on top the multiple mainframes, over 500 mid range servers and over 5,000 windows servers.  The estate was also spread across 12 different platforms covering Unix, Windows, ZOS and several legacy systems.
For this business this meant high costs in both equipment maintenance and staff, and also a very slow response to new demands as all equipment was being physically provisioned.  This ultimately meant projects were delayed and new products could not be brought to market.
Our consultant was engaged to identify the opportunities in transforming and outsourcing the estate.

Business Challenge

The client faced the issues of:

• High levels of spend on purchasing and maintaining equipment
• Acute shortage of data centre space, with associated costs of new build
• Diverse technical skills requirements spawning a large internal IT organisation#
• Over complexity leading to poor SLA performance
• Inability to react to business demands, leading to sporadic third party development and outsourcing arrangements

Services Provided

• Infrastructure Strategy
• Business Case Construction
• Market Review
• Supplier Liaison

Skills Deployed

• Programme Management
• Stakeholder Management
• Cost Modelling
• Technical Analysis
• Strategic Assessment

Our Approach

Following a review of the existing infrastructure inventories and cost structures for the estate our consultant worked with the key vendors to understand the product road maps for the various types of infrastructure being deployed.  From this a strategy was devised that would focus on three key stages: Rationalisation to fewer types of platform from 12 to three; Consolidation within each platform using relevant virtualisation technology for that platform; Outsourcing the remining estate to a tier one provider on a utility basis.
A detailed feasibility study was undertaken using a number of system specialists to ensure that the strategy was viable in both commercial and technical terms.  In parallel with this market analysis was undertaken on the nature of outsourcing deals available to take over the transformed estate.
The completed strategy and supporting research was presented to the IT Director.

Business Outcome

The strategy and the supporting technical and financial appraisal provided the client with the first realistic view of the IT estate and what options it had to remove cost and complexity.  This brought a measure of reality in terms of what was realistically achievable, but more importantly demonstrated where the value could be extracted.  Without this insight the client would have considered going straight to an outsource solution, thus enabling the outsourcer to extract the value locked into the estate.

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