Success Stories

VMware Service Manager sparks positive change for EnergyAustralia

EnergyAustralia supplies energy to 1.5 million homes and businesses across New South Wales, ACT, South Australia, Victoria and Queensland. During its 100-year history, the utility has expanded its services to include both gas and electricity and, looking to the future, is focusing on energy management and renewable resources to help transform the delivery of clean energy.

To aid modernisation, a project was established to replace EnergyAustralia’s old copper wire and radio telecommunications network with a fibre optic system called the Platform for Intelligent Network Communications (PINC). This infrastructure provides EnergyAustralia with the capacity to provide offices, substations and depots throughout it’s geographically dispersed electrical network with virtually any data service imaginable and is the backbone to EnergyAustralia’s 21st century Intelligent
Network.

In order to provide 24 x 7 support to the PINC, EnergyAustralia created a dedicated IT service desk – the Network Operations Centre (NOC). It was decided to model the NOC’s operations and processes around ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) best practice. The latest version of ITIL - Version 3 - concentrates on improving the entire lifecycle of a service, rendering it the perfect fit for the NOC.

From the outset it was evident that a robust service management solution would be needed to underpin the introduction of ITIL V3 processes, and that the diverse systems already deployed in other parts of the business would be unsuitable for this task. EnergyAustralia was already using a separate Help Desk tool owned by the 3rd party IT Support Services provider and separate in house developed Lotus Notes systems for the various ITIL processes. None of these tools were capable of easy integration and, as this situation was clearly not in-step with plans for the NOC, the team began looking for a dedicated solution to deliver the visibility and control it required.

Rapid deployment with VMware Service Manager

Karen Armstrong, Telecommunications Services Manager at EnergyAustralia, led the hunt for the optimum solution and the evaluation process saw a number of vendors invited to present. A matrix of possible tools indicated that VMware Service Manager ticked all the right boxes. Firstly it offered the out-of-the-box Incident, Problem and Change Management capabilities that EnergyAustralia needed to hit the ground running, with support for other ITIL V3 processes inbuilt and available for rollout as the project developed. Integration was also an important consideration, and it was noted that VMware Service Manager’s Federated CMDB could integrate with the Alcatel-Lucent 5620 Service Aware Manager along with the myriad other systems currently in use.

Armstrong details other factors that led to the selection of VMware Service Manager. “Because we needed to see returns in a short time frame, ease-of-configuration and ease-of-use were important considerations. Crucially, the VMware Service Manager solution offered the best ‘bang for our buck’ - particularly with the automated workflow functionality. The NOC has a small 1st level support team of 3 analysts, so automation was key to enable the NOC to efficiently manage over 6,500 calls/annum and to speed up Change authorizations for the rapidly expanding PINC network,” says Armstrong.

By early 2007, the contract with VMware Service Manager was signed and the rollout began. “It was a very short implementation, and within the first month we began training on the application. Training took a two phased approach, with the NOC and 2nd level support teams trained in phase 1. Once processes were bedded down, training moved on to key field personnel. VMware Service Manager helped us
considerably with this, by offering a pared-down, customised training session for the field staff.”

Cultural change

Armstrong explains how gaining cultural acceptance from the field workforce was a priority, and maintains that success or failure largely depended on this. Outages to the PINC network posed a serious threat to the business. Automation of associated manual processes, supported by VMware Service Manager’s ability to pinpoint unauthorized Changes, would considerably tighten operations.

“We asked staff for their input on creating Workflows and talked to them about how the new system would benefit them in terms of helping to manage rapid network growth and site-specific Change requirements,” explains Armstrong. “Using VMware Service Manager has shown that control doesn’t have to mean
inflexibility, and it is now not uncommon for a Change to be requested, reviewed and approved on the same day,” explains Michael Ward, NOC Analyst.

Easy configuration

Having addressed concerns about Change Management, the team scoped the project including required integrations and minor customisations. User satisfaction with the VMware Service Manager solution was good from the outset, buoyed by VMware Service Manager’s impressive Web response times, which put other systems used by the business in the shade.

The ability to easily configure the application in-house came into play immediately according to Armstrong. “We were able to use our own resources to set up and configure processes including Workflows and the new NOC was stable from the outset.”

Incident Management, so vital to supporting the PINC network, was up and running right away, while Change Management rapidly began to make a difference to management of the advanced MPLS Multiprotocol Label Switching) system that helps manage and monitor the electricity network. “If there is an outage on MPLS, the control room needs to be the first to know, so we implemented a Workflow that gains
approval from the relevant teams on scheduled changes,” continues Armstrong. As well as Problem, Incident and Change, the NOC is also now using Request, Knowledge, Event and Configuration anagement. The fact that VMware Service Manager supports Knowledge Centered Support (KCS) - EnergyAustralia’s preferred strategy - proved a major bonus for the team.

Armstrong reaffirms the rapid progress made: “ VMware Service Manager has been central to the successful introduction of ITIL V3 and to expanding the productivity of the Network Operations Center service desk. The solution has certainly provided the end-to-end visibility and control that we needed to support the Platform for Intelligent Communications effectively.”

Armstrong’s colleague, Rodney Dean, VMware Service Manager Infrastructure Support & Administration, concurs: “As big believers in and promoters of the Service Manager application, we set VMware a tough challenge. In response, the service from the vendor has been exemplary.”

Underlining its commitment to VMware Service Manager solution, EnergyAustralia has published a Service Catalog for all Network Services, and is focusing on creating further Workflows to support business efficiency, including for provisioning, and for the billing and reporting of network services.

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VMware Service Manager provides ITIL Service Management and Help Desk solutions including Incident Management, Problem Management, Configuration Management, Change Management, Release Management, Service Level Management and Availability Management software. Copyright © 2010 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.