CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY
CSC Australia
» CSC’s Global Outsourcing Services Division remodels services with
BMC Remedy ITSM v7
before
after
»» Customer demand for world-class best
practices, tools, integration and ITIL
alignment
»» CSC determined criteria for success
and customer satisfaction would
involve BMC
»» Criteria for solution success: interoperability, ITIL compliance, multi-tenancy,
federated CMDB
»» Selection process drove CSC to
choose BMC IT Service Management
solution
»» Problem management was reactive,
with service tickets and alerts providing
problem info
»» CSC can asses historical incidents
to look for patterns and address
problems before they occur
One of the major challenges facing IT infrastructure and services providers is multisourcing. There is a growing tendency for customers to use a selection of specialist
providers, rather than sourcing everything from a single supplier. This more ‘blended’
approach to IT services procurement places renewed emphasis on vendors’ capacity
for collaboration.
Geography
Australia
Industry
Information Technology
Service delivery is no longer an isolated endeavour and vendors must use management
tools that seamlessly integrate with multiple providers and systems to ensure different
elements underpinning service levels consistently perform. These new demands lean
heavily on bi-directional data flow between different service providers and systems, and
ITIL® (Information Technology Infrastructure Library®) compliant processes.
Solutions
BMC Remedy IT Service
Management Suite:
BMC Remedy Service Desk
BMC Remedy Change Management
BMC Remedy Asset Management
With significant parts of outsource business up for tender over a two-year period,
CSC wanted to tip the scales in its favour. Re-modelling its services on BMC Remedy
IT Service Management version 7 has proven to be a sound decision. The decision also
proves CSC’s commitment to deliver best of breed solutions to its customers through
significant investment and innovation.
BMC Knowledge Management
BMC Service Level Management
BMC Atrium CMDB
CHANGING COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE
Andrea Wilton-Connell, from CSC’s Global Outsourcing Services in Australia, says
outsourcing and IT service provision is a reasonably mature market. Whilst lots of
new business comes to market, familiar faces often vie for the same work. The
situation has placed more pressure on suppliers to innovate. Just because more
IT is being commoditised and outsourced doesn’t mean buying it comes down to price
and stock standard delivery. CSC knows customers want confidence that service providers
understand their businesses and offer the capacity for value-added solutions delivery. Against
this backdrop, providers like CSC face growing customer demands for working with multiple
vendors (multi-sourcing) and ITIL compliance.
NEW ERA DEMANDS NEW MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY
With 3,000 employees and many of Australia’s largest corporations on its books, CSC is one of
the top 3 IT service providers globally. The company’s Global Outsourcing Services division is
focused on large and mid tier outsourcing contracts, managing a complexity of IT infrastructure,
applications, networks, devices and desktop management, typically over extended periods.
A variety of common tools underpin service delivery: service desk, server management suites,
desktop management suites, asset management suites, and change management with varying
degrees of integration between toolsets, which can at times be problematic, introducing double
handling of information and job tickets.
Widespread customisation of tools compounds matters, complicating or delaying upgrades,
and in some cases making them unfeasible. Says Wilton-Connell: “We were struggling with
the older technology, with ITIL now being a requirement and our customer’s desires for best
of breed solution, renewing our systems management platform was a business imperative.”
Growing adoption of multi-sourced IT provisioning spotlighted the shortcomings of systems
management toolsets with a single service
desk managing multiple suppliers and
infrastructure elements more was required.
“Our Customers were demanding world’s best practice
systems, tools, integration and ITIL alignment; CSC made
the conscious decision to upgrade both its tools and processes, and derive a real differentiator in the market place
as a result.”
SUCCESS CRITERIA
The right systems management platform
was the single biggest determinant of
CSC’s Outsourcing Services future market
competitiveness. “Our Customers were
demanding world’s best practice systems,
ANDREA WILTON-CONNELL
tools, integration and ITIL alignment; CSC
SERVICE MODEL PROGRAMME DIRECTOR
made the conscious decision to upgrade
both its tools and processes, and derive a
real differentiator in the market place as a
result.” This overriding objective guided
specific selection criteria. Interoperability:
the new platform had to integrate with
other tools and vendors. ITIL compliance: the onus is on service providers to lead the adoption
of this best practice framework.
CSC had to change its view of IT infrastructure from topography to a service model that identified asset-to-service linkages, tying infrastructure events to business outcomes. Multi-tenancy:
hosting multiple clients in a single toolset, rather than creating a new instance of service desk
applications for every new client, was critical, particularly for keeping a lid on costs. A federated
CMDB (Configuration Management Database) was another key consideration. CSC wanted a
“single source of truth” from which to assess dependencies between its business processes,
users, and IT infrastructure.
The Remedy IT Service Management (ITSM) suite came out on top and is now being
progressively rolled out to customers on
an account-by-account basis. The suite
includes four core applications: BMC
Remedy Service Desk, BMC Remedy Asset
Management Application, BMC Remedy
“For scheduled changes the CMDB identifies the impacts on
Change Management Application, and BMC
elements related to that device, almost with the press of a
Service Level Management. It also includes
button. Previously, often we relied on people’s knowledge to
BMC Atrium CMDB to coordinate processes
determine the granularity of the change.”
based on a single view of technology components, and a Definitive Software Library
ANDREA WILTON-CONNELL
to automate associations between deployed
SERVICE MODEL PROGRAMME DIRECTOR
software, licenses, and their location. BMC
Knowledge Management provides CSC with
knowledge tools and sharing. With seamless login and integration with other non
BMC tools this makes CSC a market leader
in the service management space.
TRANSFORMATION: FROM REACTIVE TO PROACTIVE
CSC is quick to identify new intelligence that CSC now brings to problem management.
Whereas service desk calls or system generated alerts were typically the first indicator of
an existing problem, new functionality enables CSC to assess historical incidents and look
for patterns to accurately predict and address potential problems before they occur. Support
costs will be lowered as the new toolset is rolled out, never mind the fewer incidents and the
positive impact on customer satisfaction. A simple example shows how CSC administrators
can review change records managing the allocation of perhaps additional storage and allow
for scheduling automatic capacity increases before utilisation threatens service levels.
Coupled with BMC Atrium CMDB, which has centralised CSC’s assets and their configuration
in one single location, providing pathways for root cause analysis, the company is now in a
far stronger position to manage service level agreements. Wilton-Connell credits ITSM’s
“traffic light” system with bringing much more visibility to SLA status but more than that, the
ITIL framework threaded through the ITSM suite allows CSC to adopt a lifecycle approach to
managing incidents and problems. Wilton-Connell says the upshot is faster service restoration
times and accurate root cause analysis.
ITSM’s lifecycle service management approach is transforming CSC change management
through change impact analysis, opening a window into likely impacts to systems as a result
of changes. “For scheduled changes the CMDB identifies the impacts on elements related to
that device, almost with the press of a button,” says Wilton-Connell, “often we relied on people’s
knowledge to determine the granularity of the change.”
Today, CSC is regarded as one of industry’s most advanced users of IT service management
systems. CSC credits BMC’s ITSM suite with successfully redefining service offering and
significantly advancing its move to business service management. What’s more,
CSC predicts that new platform flexibility will eventually enable low cost offerings
to smaller customers the same enterprise-grade service management platform –
one of the emerging business challenges facing large-scale outsourcers. However,
more immediately, the company’s investment in BMC has paid significant dividends,
recognising the platform’s instrumental role in re-winning business recently tendered for.
ABOUT CSC
Since 1970, CSC has been serving Australia’s business and technology needs with consulting,
systems integration, infrastructure outsourcing, application services, labour supply, and domain
knowledge capabilities. CSC brings the world-class expertise of its global organisation to the specific
business issues facing Australia’s gov-ernment and commercial industries. A leader in the use of
information technology (IT) to achieve strategic business results, CSC has earned a reputation for
developing trusted partnerships with its clients.
Business runs on IT. IT runs on BMC Software.
Business thrives when IT runs smarter, faster and stronger. That’s why the most demanding IT
organizations in the world rely on BMC Software across both mainframe and distributed environments. Recognized as the leader in Business Service Management, BMC offers a comprehensive
approach and unified platform that helps IT organizations cut cost, reduce risk and drive business
profit. For the four fiscal quarters ended Dec. 31, 2008, BMC revenue was approximately $1.88 billion.
Visit www.bmc.com for more information.
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