business value analysis study

12

Click here to load reader

Upload: alistercrowe

Post on 16-May-2015

655 views

Category:

Documents


1 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Business Value Analysis Study

Business Value Analysis Study Siebel Systems, Inc.: Measuring Business Value from Rapid Server Provisioning

Copyright © 2005 E-Business Strategies. All rights reserved. - 1 - www.ebstrategy.com

Copyright © 2005 E-Business Strategies. All rights reserved.

E-Business Strategies, Inc.

Siebel Systems: Measuring Business Value from Rapid Server Provisioning

Sponsored by

www.ebstrategy.com

Business Value Analysis Study

Page 2: Business Value Analysis Study

Business Value Analysis Study Siebel Systems, Inc.: Measuring Business Value from Rapid Server Provisioning

Copyright © 2005 E-Business Strategies. All rights reserved. - 2 - www.ebstrategy.com

Bus

ines

s V

alue

Ana

lysi

s St

udy

Table of Contents Executive Summary ............................................................................................................................................. 3

Customer Relationship Management Solutions .............................................................................................. 3

Key Business Drivers .......................................................................................................................................... 5

Key Technology Challenges ............................................................................................................................... 5

Server Provisioning Solution from Symantec.................................................................................................. 7 About OpForce Software............................................................................................................................ 7

OpForce Software Implementation........................................................................................................... 8 Consulting and Extended Support......................................................................................................... 8

Business Value of Rapid Server Provisioning ................................................................................................. 9 Eliminating Image Management ................................................................................................................ 9 Rapid Server Provisioning......................................................................................................................... 10 Increased Reliability of Server Builds ...................................................................................................... 10 Intangible Benefits...................................................................................................................................... 11

Summary.............................................................................................................................................................. 11

E-Business Strategies (ebs) is a technology research and ROI consulting practice. The company offers cutting-edge research, customized consulting services, white papers and innovative educational programs. E-Business Strategies’ services are designed to give companies the ability to sense, adapt, and respond quickly to changes in the marketplace.

E-Business Strategies, Inc.

Page 3: Business Value Analysis Study

Business Value Analysis Study Siebel Systems, Inc.: Measuring Business Value from Rapid Server Provisioning

Copyright © 2005 E-Business Strategies. All rights reserved. - 3 - www.ebstrategy.com

environment—in the case of Siebel, Microsoft Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, and IBM AIX operating systems—and the flexibility provided by OpScripts scripting language.

OpForce software automates the process of building and operating a server infrastructure by creating

image -ba s ed snapsho t s containing the complete software environment of a server. The snapshot captured by Veritas OpForce includes an operating system, other software and data, and a configuration. The software manages the snapshots and eliminates the manually intensive administrative tasks associated with server provisioning.

Business Value: The benefits of an enterprise server provisioning solution based on OpForce software fall into three operational areas, with an aggregate savings of $5.1 million:

Labor savings from eliminating image management

Labor savings resulting from rapid server provisioning for solution proof-of-concepts and demonstrations

Increased reliability of server builds

Customer Relationship Management Solutions In today’s highly competitive business environment, building outstanding customer relationships is crucial to success. Siebel is a worldwide leading provider of solutions that assist enterprises in organizing their processes and technology around their customers. This type of system is referred to as

Executive Summary Siebel Systems, Inc., founded in 1993, is the world's leading technology and services provider of solutions that help organizations optimize their people, processes, and technology around their customers. An outgrowth of their tremendous success is an expansive solutions portfolio of more than 500 products—all requiring certification on many different hardware platforms and operating systems.

Business Problem: With such a large, complex, and constantly innovating product portfolio, managing and supporting the test and product demonstration environment is a business-critical activity. However, this process was previously very labor intensive. The complex environment r e q u i r e d l e n g t h y a n d troublesome builds for Microsoft Windows-, UNIX-, and Linux-based servers; the time required to execute these builds had a negative impact across product development, customer support, and sales areas.

Siebel turned to Symantec Corporation for a solution based on Veritas OpForce software not only to streamline its server provisioning process but to develop a new, innovative, and exciting level of operational efficiency that was not previously attainable. Siebel wanted to design and implement an employee self-service server provisioning model that would allow its IT staff to transfer the business of server builds to the Siebel development, system engineering, and customer support staffs, all of which would use pre-developed building blocks to satisfy their own server provisioning needs.

Solution: Siebel’s decision to use Veritas OpForce software for achieving its vision of self-service server provisioning centered around two main strengths of the software: its ability to support a heterogeneous

Fact File for Siebel Systems, Inc.

Founded: 1993 Industry-specific applications: 23 Employees: More than 5,000 Headquarters: San Mateo, California Worldwide Offices: 63 Revenue: More than $1.3 billion in 2004 Live users: More than 3 million Systems deployed: More than 4,000 companies around the world R&D investment: Cumulative $2 billion to date

Page 4: Business Value Analysis Study

Business Value Analysis Study Siebel Systems, Inc.: Measuring Business Value from Rapid Server Provisioning

Copyright © 2005 E-Business Strategies. All rights reserved. - 4 - www.ebstrategy.com

Call Center and Service: Assists companies in delivering improved customer service, while reducing the cost of serving customers.

Customer Order Management: Accelerates the quote-to-cash process by creating relevant offers and promotions for customers.

Marketing Automation: Enables the execution of personalized campaigns synchronized across all channels.

Partner Relationship Management: Simplifies management of complex partner relationships.

Sales Force Automation: Allows sales organizations to share information across teams and manage the sales pipeline.

Siebel supports its varied offerings with global services. One product from Siebel Services’ portfolio is the Customer Experience Blueprint, a six-stage plan that enables companies to achieve business results quickly and cost-effectively. Siebel Services covers the sales methodology area with a product called OnTarget, which provides a variety of sales consulting and sales training services. Siebel Services also offers implementation and change management services that help customers get the most out of their investment.

customer relationship management (CRM), and Siebel is the pioneer force in the CRM space.

Founded in 1993, Siebel started shipping its first product in 1995. Since then, the company has experienced tremendous growth. Today, the number of installed users is over 3.7 million. This user base covers Siebel’s extensive product portfolio of more than 500 products across 23 industries in 20 languages.

Siebel’s focus from the day of its founding has been on customer relationships. Tom Siebel, the founder, believed strongly that organizing information around customers leads to outstanding customer experiences, which, in turn, delivers superior business results. Siebel’s solutions are comprehensive across the entire CRM landspace and include:

Business Analytics: Integrates data from multiple enterprise sources and transforms the data into important insights that enable decision makers.

CRM OnDemand: Provides hosted CRM solution.

Customer Data Integration: Facilitates the integration of data from various sources to provide a complete enterprise-wide view of the customer.

Figure 1: Siebel User Growth (Source: Siebel Systems)

1993-4 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 1Q2005

0 500 4,000 20,000 60,000 200,000

600,000

1 M

1.3 M

2.2 M

2.9 M3.2 M

Page 5: Business Value Analysis Study

Business Value Analysis Study Siebel Systems, Inc.: Measuring Business Value from Rapid Server Provisioning

Copyright © 2005 E-Business Strategies. All rights reserved. - 5 - www.ebstrategy.com

range of functionality—on one level, offering highly specific process solutions like call center management; and, on another level, offering industry-specific solutions tailored for areas such as the healthcare or automotive markets. These factors prompted the rapid growth in Siebel’s product portfolio to more than 500.

Siebel’s large product portfolio required certification on many different hardware platforms and operating systems. The resulting complexity had a significant impact on a number of operational areas. In 2004, the IT team began searching for a solution that would deliver the following via rapid server provisioning:

Proof-of-concepts and Demonstrations: More rapid turnaround of proof-of-concepts and demonstrations as a critical element in shortening the sales cycle and creating revenue impact.

Customer Support: The need to improve troubleshooting and problem-solving capabilities by enabling customer support to rapidly build a replica of a customer’s IT environment.

Product Development and Testing: Bringing products to market faster by creating a rapidly configurable test environment that facilitates beta testing across a wide variety of computing platforms.

Key Technology Challenges Pradeep Singh, Director of Compute Utility at Siebel, and Paco Calderon, Senior Manager Windows Compute Utility, teamed to develop a solution for streamlining the server provisioning process. The complex environment was causing lengthy and troublesome server builds, which, in turn, were impacting product development, customer support, and sales areas.

The provisioning process involves creation of a server object and placing an up-to-date snapshot or an image on the corresponding physical server asset. The compute utility team faced the challenge of managing an immense number of images for each of

With such a diverse product portfolio, managing and supporting the test and product demonstration environment was very labor intensive. And the environment required time consuming and complex server builds for the company’s various operating systems—Microsoft Windows, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, IBM AIX, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux. The time required to execute these builds had a negative impact across product development, customer support, and sales areas.

To solve this critical bottleneck in the solutions management process, Siebel turned to Symantec (formerly Veritas Software) for a solution based on Veritas OpForce software, which not only streamlined the company’s server provisioning process but moved its IT environment to a new frontier of operational efficiency.

Key Business Drivers Competitive pressures in the CRM area began increasing in the early 2000s, making it necessary for the technology companies behind these applications to look for new ways to distinguish themselves in the marketplace. Several factors contributed to the upsurge in competition. First, the ERP vendors (such as SAP AG) began moving into the CRM space, seeking new revenue streams, as customer facing technologies began to show signs of mass adoption and maturity. The other competitive factor is the emergence of hosted CRM solutions; Salesforce.com is a well-known example of this type of approach. These solutions offer lower initial capital investments and can accelerate time-to-market requirements, making them very appealing to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). To remain competitive, CRM technology vendors such as Siebel sought new, innovative ways to deliver value-add solutions to the SMB segment, a virtually untapped CRM revenue stream.

Completing the competitive landscape, IT organizations began minimizing vendor usage to better facilitate integration and enable automation of more complex processes. CRM technology pioneer Siebel and other established CRM vendors responded to this challenge by offering a broader

Page 6: Business Value Analysis Study

Business Value Analysis Study Siebel Systems, Inc.: Measuring Business Value from Rapid Server Provisioning

Copyright © 2005 E-Business Strategies. All rights reserved. - 6 - www.ebstrategy.com

more streamlined, efficient component to the process by introducing employee self-service. They would transfer the server builds to the development, system engineering, and customer support staffs, who would use pre-developed building blocks to satisfy their own server provisioning needs. The building blocks would be created and maintained by the system administration staff and made available through a centralized web console. Each team would handle its own requirements by choosing an available server and directing the server build through the building blocks, containing both Microsoft Windows Server and UNIX versions, as

the different hardware pieces, operating systems, and languages supporting the company’s expansive product portfolio. The source image had to be kept up to date across multiple system versions. The existing process involved the daily processing of operating systems and software for reconfiguration of servers that were being turned over for different development and engineering groups within Siebel.

The main obstacle in the provisioning process was the sheer size of the server environment—Siebel has more than 3,500 servers across its enterprise, including more than 1,000 test and development servers running the Microsoft Windows Server , Red Hat Enterprise Linux , SUSE Linux, and UNIX (Sun Solaris, IBM AIX, HP-UX) operating environments. The company’s Salt Lake City, Utah data center houses approximately 900 of the machines, with the remainder in the San Mateo, California data center facility. For Calderon and Singh, this meant that they had to manage more than 200 images across the 1,000-machine environment. This included ensuring that frequent patch releases for Microsoft Windows Server were correctly applied. In addition, they had to maintain an audit/tracking method for changes to UNIX- and Linux-based server images.

Calderon and Singh wanted to move beyond image management and envisioned the ability to bring a

Extensive Server Environment at Siebel Systems 170 Sun Fire V440 servers running the Solaris 9 Operating System 780 IBM Blade Center Servers running Microsoft Windows Server 2000 or 2003, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux 500 IBM p-Series servers running IBM AIX 77 IBM Blade Center HS20 and HS40 running Microsoft Windows Server 2000 or 2003 170 various HP servers running Microsoft Windows Server 200 or 2003 and HP-UX

Figure 2: OpForce Software-based Architecture at Siebel

Veritas OpForce deployed on a Sun Fire V440 running Solaris 9 Operating System

Approximately 1,527 IBM and HP servers running Microsoft Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux, IBM AIX, HP-UX

170 Sun Fire V440 servers running the Solaris 9 Operating System

Web presentation of server provisioning building blocks

Veritas OpForce deployed on a Sun Fire V440 running Solaris 9 Operating System

Approximately 1,527 IBM and HP servers running Microsoft Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux, IBM AIX, HP-UX

170 Sun Fire V440 servers running the Solaris 9 Operating System

Web presentation of server provisioning building blocks

Page 7: Business Value Analysis Study

Business Value Analysis Study Siebel Systems, Inc.: Measuring Business Value from Rapid Server Provisioning

Copyright © 2005 E-Business Strategies. All rights reserved. - 7 - www.ebstrategy.com

Veritas OpForce software from Symantec for enterprise-class server provisioning. With a relationship dating back nearly four years, to 1999, Symantec and Siebel built upon previous successful implementations using Veritas NetBackup, Cluster Server, and Storage Foundation software for

datacenter availability.

Siebel selected OpForce software for self-service sever provisioning on the basis of two primary attributes: its support for heterogeneous environments—including all server platforms within the S i ebe l d a t a cen t e r —and flexibility provided by its OpScripts scripting language.

About OpForce Software OpForce software automates the process of building and operating a server infrastructure by creating image-based snapshots containing the complete software environment of a server. The snapshot

well as a variety of software applications such as Microsoft Office and, of course, Siebel products.

In April 2004, Calderon and Singh began building a small proof-of-concept that would save an image snapshot and load the image to a different target of a similar type. The goal was to create a more predictable process and avoid various s y s t e m a d m i n i s t r a t o r s configuring operating system and software packages manually. It was during this timeframe that the company first used Veritas OpForce software from Symantec for server provisioning.

Server Provisioning Solution from Symantec In April 2004, Symantec was asked to participate in the proof-of-concept. Siebel wanted to leverage

“I was very impressed that OpForce software enabled us to provision 42 separate blade servers in a matter of hours. Further, the provisioning was reliable and predictable. ”

— Pradeep Singh Director, Compute Utility

Siebel Systems, Inc.

Functional Area Capabilities

Server Discovery Automatically discovers new (bare metal) servers as well as active servers.

Operating System Discovery and Provisioning

Saves an operating system “snapshot” from a server. This snapshot can be used to provision multiple servers with an identical configuration.

Software Discovery and Provisioning

Discovers what software is currently installed on each server and deploys additional applications to those servers.

Web Administration Centralizes all OpForce software functions in a web browser that can be securely ac-cessed from anywhere in the world.

Heterogeneous Support Supports most major operating systems and server devices, including the Solaris Operating System, IBM AIX, Microsoft Windows Server, HP-UX, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux.

Network Personalization In addition to configuring the Operating System and applications, OpForce software can configure network settings such as IP address, hostname, and DNS settings.

Table 1: Comprehensive Functionality of OpForce Software

Page 8: Business Value Analysis Study

Business Value Analysis Study Siebel Systems, Inc.: Measuring Business Value from Rapid Server Provisioning

Copyright © 2005 E-Business Strategies. All rights reserved. - 8 - www.ebstrategy.com

of OpScripts that would ultimately provide end users with the ability to provision their own servers. The idea was to create a single OpForce software

package for every available software package that might need to be installed; software packages could be Microsoft-related products or database packages from IBM. The ability to create an entire range of scripts gave Siebel developers and engineers the ability to install different CRM packages and test them on a given, known platform. The platform would require a

certain number of packages from Microsoft, IBM, Citrix, etc. in order to test or demonstrate the particular Siebel system. There were approximately 50 software packages involved in this CRM server platform testing effort.

To understand the power of OpScript, consider an example involving Adobe Acrobat. Imagine that Adobe Acrobat makes an update to the Adobe Acrobat software application. Using the previous process that Siebel followed, the Adobe Acrobat update would need to be made to each of the 200 images residing on various hardware environments—a time-consuming process. Today, with OpScripts, the update needs to be done once and is then integrated into the script program. As

captured by OpForce software includes an operating system, other software and data, and a configuration. OpForce software manages the snapshots and eliminates the manually intensive administrative tasks associated with server provisioning, including tasks in complex, heterogeneous environments.

OpForce software provides extensive support for most major server and blade platforms, with support for most operating systems, i n c l u d i n g M i c r o s o f t Windows Server, the Solaris Operating System, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux, HP-UX, and IBM AIX. The software can also support the concurrent management of mixed VLAN and non-VLAN network topologies.

A key piece of functionality based in OpForce software are OpScripts—server-side scripts that automate provisioning tasks. The scripts are built using a Java API interface and leverage the power and flexibility of Java technology. OpScripts are created by specifying a sequence of OpForce software commands. OpForce software also provides a web-based console that enables provisioning and management of servers with a standard, easy-to-use web interface.

OpForce Software Implementation In October 2004, Siebel began the first step toward server provisioning automation with the implementation of OpForce software. The initial focus was to manage the already existing images with the software—a relatively straightforward task, as one of the core strengths of OpForce software is the efficient management of multiple images.

In the early implementation stages, the process of provisioning and re-provisioning servers remained unchanged—relying on images. But Singh and Calderon wanted to quickly move beyond that process and implement the “à la carte” capability.

Implementation of the à la carte provisioning capability started in January 2005, with the creation

OpForce Software Implementation Timeline April 2004 — Proof-of-concept started July 2004 — Veritas OpForce selected to automate server provisioning October 2004 — Veritas OpForce used to manage images using existing process January 2005 — Symantec Global Services engaged to begin building à la carte process June 2005 — OpForce software deployed across Microsoft Windows Server-, Red Hat Enterprise Linux-, and SUSE Linux-based environments July 2005 — OpForce software deployed across server environment running the Solaris Operating System

“Creating an OpScript is a simple task. It is very clear and straightforward, and it is an ‘out-of-the-box’ capability using OpForce software. OpScripts are critical to our vision of user self-service provisioning.”

— Paco Calderon Senior Manager, Windows Compute Utility

Siebel Systems, Inc.

Page 9: Business Value Analysis Study

Business Value Analysis Study Siebel Systems, Inc.: Measuring Business Value from Rapid Server Provisioning

Copyright © 2005 E-Business Strategies. All rights reserved. - 9 - www.ebstrategy.com

that the new Siebel OpScript administrators could manage the new server provisioning environment in an optimal manner. Symantec Education Services also delivered three training classes focused on the

use of the web-interface tool used by developers and end users to perform server builds.

Business Value of Rapid Server Provisioning The solution from Symantec is driving measurable business value for Siebel. These break

into three basis categories:

Labor savings by eliminating image management

Labor savings resulting from rapid server provisioning for solution proof-of-concepts and demonstrations

Increased reliability of server builds

Eliminating Image Management The OpForce solution eliminates time-intensive image management processes for Siebel. The previous process for image updating took an

users require Adobe Acrobat for their particular environment, they simply execute the OpScript for the corresponding server build.

C o n s u l t i n g a n d Extended Support

VERITAS Consulting (now part of Symantec Global Services), working in conjunction with O p F o r c e p r o d u c t engineers, was instrumental in helping Calderon and Singh transition to a self-service server provisioning environment. Consultants and engineers created an implementation roadmap and a project plan to ensure a smooth integration path. With approval to move forward, the team began to build the critical, specific use case detail needed to achieve all of the project milestones. Veritas Consulting also provided OpScript templates for Siebel administrators to use for creating specific scripts for a particular software package.

In addition to architecture design and implementation assistance, consultants and engineers from Symantec provided a number of training sessions to the Siebel team to help ensure

“We would not have been able to deploy this at all without assistance from Veritas Consulting. The consultants, in addition to product engineers, provided us with the expertise we needed to make the implementation a success.”

— Pradeep Singh Director, Compute Utility

Siebel Systems, Inc.

Image Updates/Year Hours/Incident Annual Savings

Image Management Before OpForce

800 500 US$240,000

Net Annual Savings US$240,000

Assumptions: Average burdened salary per year = US$120,000 (US$60 per hour) Images updated once per quarter = 200 * 4 = 800 Image update occurs across Microsoft Windows Server, UNIX, and Linux platforms

Process Eliminated

Table 2: Business Value from Elimination of Image Management

Page 10: Business Value Analysis Study

Business Value Analysis Study Siebel Systems, Inc.: Measuring Business Value from Rapid Server Provisioning

Copyright © 2005 E-Business Strategies. All rights reserved. - 10 - www.ebstrategy.com

using a burdened rate of US$60 per hour, E-Business Strategies ascertains annual savings of US$984,000. Table 3 illustrates these savings.

Increased Reliability of Server Builds Eliminating the process of image management can significantly improve the reliability of server builds. Each application and server service must be updated manually and configured appropriately for each host. The end result can produce a number of critical errors, including:

Wrong version of operating system

Missing patches

Software or library dependencies

Interrupted installations

Manual configuration errors

The cumulative result for Siebel was a high number of server rebuilds requiring extra labor for execution. Errors with the server builds also delay time to deployment for each server provisioning—which, in some instances, might be related to a critical test, proof-of-concept build, or solution demonstration. E-Business Strategies estimates, given the size of the test and development environments, faulty server

administrator five hours per image to complete and involved repeated updating and testing.

Assuming an average burdened salary of US$60 per hour for an administrator and assuming that all updated images were updated once a quarter, the business value created by virtually eliminating this process creates an annual savings of US$240,000 per year. The analysis behind the numbers is broken out in Table 2.

Rapid Server Provisioning OpForce streamlines server provisioning via support for OpScripts. Deploying multiple servers is a time-consuming process, involving the installation of operating systems as well as applications and patches. E-Business Strategies estimates the time to perform these two steps for a manual server provisioning process to be approximately nine hours per server. A self-service server automation solution based on OpForce software cuts an average of eight hours from this manual process.

In Siebel’s extensive test and development environment, 1,025 servers are deployed between the company’s Salt Lake City and San Mateo datacenters. Assuming that each machine is rebuilt twice a year, a relatively conservative estimate, and

Table 3: Business Value from Rapid Server Provisioning

Total Number of Servers

Hours Saved per Build

Annual Savings

Rapid Server Provisioning 1,025 8 US$984,000

Net Annual Savings US$984,000

Rebuilds/machine/year

2

Process Improved

Assumptions: Average burdened salary per year = US$120,000 (US$60 per hour) Machines rebuilt at least twice per year

Page 11: Business Value Analysis Study

Business Value Analysis Study Siebel Systems, Inc.: Measuring Business Value from Rapid Server Provisioning

Copyright © 2005 E-Business Strategies. All rights reserved. - 11 - www.ebstrategy.com

The à la carte approach enabled by the OpForce software improves administrator productivity, allowing the re-routing of critical resources to tasks that could not be addressed before. Specifically, rather than “fire fighting,” Siebel administrators are able to proactively create tools or work on projects that improve the resiliency of the infrastructure or enhance service delivery to customers.

One final benefit of using OpForce software is worth mentioning. OpForce software allows Siebel administrators to draw user authentication via Microsoft Active Directory whenever creating a corresponding LDAP group for newly integrated applications. As a result, administrators are not burdened with the requirement to maintain two directories of log-in names for their entire user base.

Summary Siebel’s ambitious goal of achieving employee self-service for server provisioning is yet another operational innovation—with the help of OpForce software from Symantec—that will help keep the IT solutions company at the forefront of the CRM industry. The quantifiable benefits Siebel is enjoying translate into very real, relevant takeaways for IT managers and directors everywhere—across a large cross section of industries:

OpForce software enables IT managers to provision servers and blade assets.

rebuilds would occur 50% of the time, primarily because of the complexity of the image management environment.

By eliminating the image management process and automating the server provisioning process, OpForce software significantly increases the reliability of server builds and eliminates labor associated with rebuilding and correcting a faulty provisioning for Siebel.

With all 1,025 servers managed by OpForce software, assuming that each machine would be rebuilt twice per year (the first time) and that half of those efforts would require a second rebuild, significant savings can be realized by improving the reliability of the process. Using a fully burdened rate of US$60 per hour, labor savings amount to US$492,000 annually. Table 4 illustrates this benefit.

Intangible Benefits While a significant amount of information in this document is devoted to illustrating the quantitative value of the OpForce software solution for Siebel, there are intangible benefits as well. Eliminating risk and security issues associated with the manual image process is one such benefit. Ensuring that each image has appropriate operating system patches and antivirus updates was an intensive and error-prone aspect of that process. Elimination of the manual image management process also reduces security risks.

Table 4: Business Value via Elimination of Faulty Server Builds

Total Number of Servers

Reliability Improved

Annual Savings

Rapid Server Provisioning 1,025 .50 US$492,000

Net Annual Savings US$492,000

Rebuilds/Machine/Year

2

Assumptions: Average burdened salary per year = US$120,000 (US$60 per hour) Machines rebuilt at least twice per year

Process Improved

Page 12: Business Value Analysis Study

Business Value Analysis Study Siebel Systems, Inc.: Measuring Business Value from Rapid Server Provisioning

Copyright © 2005 E-Business Strategies. All rights reserved. - 12 - www.ebstrategy.com

automation. These labor savings are summarized in Table 5.

The deployment of the technology must be backed by reliable services. Leveraging Veritas Consulting for comparable projects, organizations can shorten deployment cycles and lower costs. For complex IT projects like this deployment, organizations should seek services assistance with architecture design, implementation, and training. Singh identified their involvement as essential to the successful execution of their 15-month project.

When all of the savings are compiled from the three above business value categories, E-Business Strategies identifies more than US$5 million in savings over a three-year period.

OpForce software enables server provisioning in large, complex, multi-operating system environments.

Automation of server provisioning tasks not only saves times but ensures accuracy of the server builds. Concurrently, server provisioning management and automation provide peace of mind that servers and applications are running smoothly on a daily basis.

Costly and unwieldy image management process eliminated via innovative à la carte process allows end users to create their own server builds.

Significant labor savings can be realized using OpForce software for self-service server

E-Business Strategies (ebs) is a technology research and ROI consulting practice.

Since its inception, the company’s focus has been on the 3C's — Conceptualize, Communicate and Create. Known for our real-world experience, consultative style, and pragmatic approach, ebs provides strategic guidance to clients by delivering analysis, market research, white papers, and consulting services.

ebs is committed to helping its clients overcome market challenges and improve their business practices. ebs specializes in e-business, mobile solutions, business process outsourcing (BPO), offshore outsourcing, CRM, and Supply Chain processes and technology architecture.

Focused on information technology enabled solutions, the company offers cutting-edge research, customized ROI consulting services, and innovative educational programs. ebs services are designed to give companies the ability to sense, adapt, and respond quickly to changes in the marketplace.

4080 McGinnis Ferry Road Suite 603 Alpharetta, GA 30005

Phone: (00-1) 678-339-1236 Fax: (00-1) 678-339-9793

Email: [email protected]

E-Business Strategies, Inc.

R&D for Next-Generation Solutions

Visit us on the Web: www.ebstrategy.com

The information contained in this report represents the current view of E-Business Strategies (ebs) on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. It should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of ebs or VERITAS, and ebs cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.

Annual Savings 3-Year Total Image Management Process Elimi-nation

US$240,000 US$720,000

Rapid Server Provisioning Process Improvement

US$984,000 US$2,952,000

Rapid Server Provisioning Reliabil-ity Improvement

US$492,000 US$1,476,000

Total Three-Year Savings US$5,148,000

Table 5: Business Value Summary