Microsoft System Center 2012Customer Solution Case Study

Hosting Provider Aims to Fix 60 Percent of IT Incidents with Automation Solution

OverviewCountry or Region: GermanyIndustry: Professional services—IT services

Customer ProfileT-Systems is an IT services provider based in Bonn, Germany. It provides IT and hosting services for parent company Deutsche Telekom and other firms.

Business SituationT-Systems wanted to build a private cloud infrastructure so that it could meet customer demand, continuously reduce IT costs, improve service availability, and reduce IT drudgery to attract top talent.

SolutionT-Systems created a private cloud infrastructure with Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft System Center 2012 data center solutions, using System Center to automate manual IT processes.

Benefits Addresses customer needs for cloud

solutions Reduces costs by automating IT

incident resolution Improves service quality Attracts top IT talent

“By using System Center 2012, we expect to automate the self-healing of 60 percent of our IT incidents in three years. This means we can grow our business while reducing IT costs.”

Anja Fiegler, Head, Development Lab, Central End User Services, T-Systems

T-Systems was eager to adopt cloud computing so that it could aggressively drive down IT costs and improve service availability. To create a cloud computing environment as quickly as possible, T-Systems turned to Microsoft. It used the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system with Hyper-V technology and Microsoft System Center 2012 data center solutions to set up a global private cloud infrastructure that could scale to accommodate 1.5 million users. By using Microsoft software, T-Systems was able to quickly meet customer demand for cloud solutions, improve service quality, and reduce costs. By using System Center, the company expects to automate the resolution of up to 60 percent of IT incidents within three years, leading to an annual savings of US$500,000. A highly automated infrastructure also helps T-Systems attract top IT talent.

SituationT-Systems began as the IT department for German telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom but evolved into a full-service IT services and hosting business for large businesses and government organizations. Today, T-Systems employs more than 47,000 people and provides information and communication technology systems for multinational corporations and public institutions. T-Systems has offices in more than 20 countries and generated revenues of around €9.1 billion (US$12.8 billion) in 2010.

The T-Systems Central End User Services group provides messaging and desktop solutions, such as Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft Lync Server 2010, and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, as managed services. “We manage more than a half-million mailboxes, 200,000 for Deutsche Telekom and 400,000 for external customers,” says Anja Fiegler, Head of the Development Lab in Central End User Services at T-Systems.

Demand for Cloud ComputingIn 2010, many T-Systems customers requested to run their communications solutions in a cloud environment. Cloud computing goes beyond virtualization and involves creating a utility-like reservoir of pooled, virtualized resources that can be dynamically provisioned as needed.

“Customers want to move to cloud computing to reduce costs and move to an ‘IT as a service’ model, whereby IT services are available as needed using a commoditized, standardized infrastructure,” says Fiegler. “Customers want to get away

from customized IT infrastructures that are expensive to maintain and difficult to change. The market demand for cloud computing is very high, and we want to be cloud-ready.”

One important customer, a large German automobile manufacturer, came to T-Systems in late 2010 wanting to run its office productivity applications in a private cloud environment.

Need for Deeper AutomationBecause of the need to quickly meet this particular customer’s need, T-Systems accelerated its investigation into cloud technologies. The big stumbling block was finding tools that could more fully automate processes such as creating and decommissioning virtual machines, load-balancing server clusters, and troubleshooting and solving problems.

“Because cloud environments are so dynamic, with compute and storage resources changing on the fly, they must be heavily automated,” Fiegler says. “We needed more tools to automate as many processes as possible and implement self-healing processes where possible. Without extensive automation, we would not be able to meet our cost-reduction benchmarks or ensure the necessary levels of quality and availability.”

T-Systems has contractual agreements with customers to decrease data center costs by 5 to 10 percent each year, which it achieves by steadily increasing data center automation. T-Systems calls this metric “automation ratio to incidents,” and both T-Systems and customer management watch it closely. In its traditional data center

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“We needed more tools to automate as many processes as possible and implement self-healing processes where possible.”

Anja Fiegler, Head, Development Lab, Central End User Services, T-Systems

environment, with a mix of physical and virtual servers, T-Systems was able to automate—or “self-heal”—only 3 percent of its 4,000 service incidents a month. There was huge pressure to increase the level of IT automation to reduce staffing costs, especially because T-Systems is expanding rapidly around the world.

“We want to reduce staffing costs but also hire the best people,” Fiegler says. “IT talent in many countries is at a premium, and for the people we do need to hire, we need to offer a challenging environment where people do more than just watch consoles for errors.”

Opportunity to Improve Service LevelsT-Systems was also under pressure to progressively improve service levels. When problems with its managed hosting infrastructure occurred, T-Systems operators had to look at multiple consoles and management packs and manually collate data. This could take hours and delay response to problems.

SolutionIn mid-2010, T-Systems began to set up a private cloud infrastructure for the German auto manufacturer’s office productivity environment. That environment consisted of 15 host servers running the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system with Hyper-V virtualization technology and 350 virtual machines running on those hosts.

By early 2011, T-Systems began to expand its private cloud infrastructure to host other customer solutions. It is targeting a global infrastructure that can scale to accommodate 1.5 million users. The company has a central data center in

Munich and satellite data centers around the world to serve customers that have international operations and require local data residency. Eventually, T-Systems will have private cloud environments across Europe, the Americas, and Asia.

Progressive Automation of IT ProcessesAt the same time that T-Systems was designing and testing its first private cloud infrastructure, it was evaluating Microsoft System Center 2012 data center solutions, notably the Virtual Machine Manager and Orchestrator components.

“We evaluated other cloud management solutions, but we gravitated to System Center 2012 because we already ran the complete suite and knew that we could achieve significant benefits by upgrading to the latest version,” says Jan Draheim, Orchestrator Engineer in Central End User Services at T-Systems. “Additionally, System Center is a highly integrated product, allowing functional experts of one System Center 2012 component to easily support and use other components. Further, the seamless integration saves time in development and customization.”

T-Systems is currently testing System Center 2012 to automate manual tasks such as provisioning virtual machines, deploying Exchange Server or Lync Server host servers, load-balancing clusters, and resolving incidents such as restarting a failed server.

Currently, when an incident such as a failed host server occurs, T-Systems uses Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 to detect it and notify an operator. But the operator then executes a

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“We evaluated other cloud management solutions, but we gravitated to System Center 2012 because we already ran the complete suite and knew that we could achieve significant benefits by upgrading to the latest version.”

Jan Draheim, Orchestrator Engineer, Central End User Services, T-Systems

series of manual steps to restart the server. With System Center 2012 Operations Manager, self-healing processes will resolve the issue and restart the server automatically, improving both service quality and IT efficiency.

“We can collect and consolidate all our Operations Manager events and order specific responses using all the System Center 2012 components instead of manually resolving them.” Draheim says. For example, if System Center identifies a network problem that requires restarting a switch, Orchestrator can coordinate all the required steps and contact an operator if necessary. “With System Center 2012, we can identify and solve problems much faster—in minutes rather than hours,” Draheim says.

Broad InteroperabilitySystem Center 2012 comes with integration packs for Microsoft programs such as Exchange Server and SharePoint Server, but there are also integration packs to many third-party products. Specifically, it has successfully tested System Center to manage HP Service Center and Remedy IT service management software from BMC Software.

T-Systems plans to move System Center 2012 into production in May 2012 for the auto manufacturer’s office productivity cloud environment and will begin using it for other customers soon after.

BenefitsBy upgrading to System Center 2012, T-Systems has been able to set up a highly automated private cloud environment and achieve aggressive cost-reduction goals. It

has also improved service availability and attracted top IT talent because of its automated environment.

Addresses Customer Needs for Cloud SolutionsT-Systems quickly addressed its first customer’s need for a private cloud deployment by using System Center 2012. “System Center 2012 made it possible for us to build a private cloud infrastructure. Without a way to manage the complex cloud fabric, you simply cannot scale the underlying infrastructure quickly enough or ensure the level of service that customers demand,” Fiegler says.

Draheim adds, “Cloud computing is more than just virtualizing servers; management and effective orchestration within the data center become more critical than ever. With System Center 2012, we have the tools to manage this more complex infrastructure.”

Reduces Costs by Automating IT Incident ResolutionWith its upgraded management infrastructure, T-Systems can meet aggressive internal and customer demands to reduce IT costs. During the first year of using System Center orchestration, T-Systems expects to increase its automation-ratio-to-incidents metric from 3 percent to 16 percent, which means that it will be able to automate the resolution of 16 percent of its 4,000 service incidents each month. This will result in a savings of 640 hours of IT staff time, worth more than $15,000 a month.

In the next two years, T-Systems plans to double the incident resolution rate—a 35 percent increase in the second year and a

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“System Center 2012 made it possible for us to build a private cloud infrastructure. Without a way to manage the complex cloud fabric, you simply cannot scale the underlying infrastructure quickly enough or ensure the level of service that customers demand.”

Anja Fiegler, Head, Development Lab, Central End User Services, T-Systems

60 percent increase in the third year. “By using System Center 2012, we expect to automate the self-healing of 60 percent of our IT incidents in three years. This means we can grow our business while reducing IT costs,” Fiegler says. By automating the resolution of 60 percent of its service incidents, T-Systems could reduce costs by more than $500,000 annually.

Even the time savings from a process as fundamental as provisioning a virtual machine in a cloud environment are significant. Prior to using System Center 2012, the T-Systems staff needed three hours to deploy a virtual machine and perform cluster, storage, and service pack checks. By System Center 2012, staff has reduced that process to 30 minutes.

Improves Service Quality By adopting private cloud computing, T-Systems can deliver better service quality. “With manual processes, errors can happen and staff cannot react as fast as they need to,” Fiegler says. “As a result, servers fail and applications stop. With automated processes, we can be much more proactive. Today we offer a 99.9 percent service level agreement, but with private cloud computing, we expect to increase that by one or two additional nines.”

Attracts Top IT TalentT-Systems hopes that its highly automated cloud management environment will help

to attract the best staff as it expands around the world. “Trained IT staff is hard to find,” Fiegler says. “To get them to come work for us, we need to offer them challenging and rewarding work rather than having them stare at a monitor all day or respond to emergencies such as rebooting servers and repairing databases. With System Center 2012, our staff is free to do more rewarding and creative activities.”

Microsoft System Center 2012Microsoft System Center 2012 helps your organization achieve IT as a service by enabling productive infrastructure, predictable applications, and cloud computing on your terms. With System Center 2012, use a self-service model to deliver flexible and cost-effective private cloud infrastructure to your business units while capitalizing on existing data center investments. Applications run your business, so System Center 2012 is designed to offer deep application insight combined with a service-centric approach to help you deliver predictable application services. Finally, by using System Center 2012, you can deliver and consume private and public cloud computing on your terms, with common management experiences across both.

For more information about Microsoft System Center 2012, go to:

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about T-Systems products and services, visit the website at: www.t-systems.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published April 2012

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Windows Server 2008 R2− Microsoft System Center 2012

Technologies− Hyper-V

www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/system-center/2012.aspx

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