With over 400 desktops and 20 remote sites servicing 98,000 ratepayers, Hutt City Council (HCC) is constantly on the lookout for ways to do more without necessarily spending more. This is a challenge for any business, and no more so than when it comes to IT, which is constantly growing in complexity to meet changing business needs. For HCC, the added attention that comes with public funding makes the need for both predictability and transparency essential.

By engaging Fujitsu to manage and support its IT systems, HCC is getting better value for its ratepayers by driving down the total cost of ownership of IT, while improving internal customer satisfaction and business efficiency.

Looking for efficiencies
The big issue for HCC was efficiency: how to build more efficiency into IT, better manage costs associated with IT delivery, and provide better systems and tools for staff.

“There were hurdles we had to overcome and historical issues around aging infrastructure,” says Sarah Allison, Hutt City manager, information management.

The situation was a sticking point. Old PCs and a slow network saw mounting downtime and difficulties accessing information when it was needed.

The turning point was a technology refresh, which saw a staged rollout of new PCs, server upgrades, and desktop standardisation. It didn’t stop there. HCC took the next step and engaged Fujitsu in a long-term outsource arrangement to capitalise on its IT investment and establish best practice management systems.

“We were prepared to invest in the environment and infrastructure but were looking for a facilities manager who could capitalise on that investment and put in place the sort of management that meant efficiencies were actually gained,” says Allison.

Virtual IT
By engaging Fujitsu, HCC now has a virtual IT department that manages its 400 desktops, 30 servers and 70 printers, in a mixed operating environment, where Windows, Solaris, and Linux are used to support the Council’s rating, asset management, and other IT systems.

The outsource agreement provides a customised remote IT service desk, which processes approximately 400 calls a month. Service delivery is completed remotely, for things like user support and simple break-fixes, or by an onsite team of three. Specialised support staff, such as UNIX, database & Linux administrators, provide the extra skills required to support the Council's environment.

The engagement is encapsulated in a service level agreement, largely based on call resolution, which is commonly in single figures and, most critically, core systems uptime, which has exceeded the agreed benchmark of 99.5 percent uptime for the past 30 consecutive months.

“Broadly, the engagement provides a framework to solve ongoing IT issues,” says Allison. “Over the past three years the volatility in our IT environment has been reduced significantly.

“What we have been able to do is to take volatility out of the environment to the point where we anticipate calls.”

The new stability has in part been achieved by an infrastructure upgrade that included a standardised image for the desktop, making remote management much easier.

Combined with call analysis to spot trends, Fujitsu has been able to proactively manage problems and identify areas for targeted, high return, IT investment.

Aligning business and IT
Outsourcing has delivered very real benefits to HCC. Total cost of IT ownership over the last four years has been reduced by over 12 percent. Fujitsus’ performance on 19 of the 23 metrics that describe HCC best practice for systems administration and standardisation has improved. And HCC IT user satisfaction has gone from 69 percent to 84 percent over three years.

Cost transparency is another major benefit, says Allison. “When you get billed from an outsource company you know all your costs. So the decisions around whether to do something are far clearer.

Building in predictability and transparency of costs is very important in a public environment.” The other advantage of engaging an outsourcer with the skill sets and size of Fujitsu is getting access to a breadth of skills that many organisations cannot carry for themselves. “Having an outsourcer who can bring to bear the skills for a specific role, at a specific time, and manage the resourcing of that, is really useful,” says Allison.

“The arrangement is inherently flexible, which means we can use Fujitsu for different projects and short-term resourcing. It also means that if there is a request from part of the business that is outside of our normal activity, then it can be appropriately costed and provided to the business as an option, allowing true cost/benefit analysis.” This cross engagement with Fujitsus’ IT and business consulting capabilities has included property and technical project managers, technical writers, business analysis, and knowledge management consultancy.

The defining element in the success of Fujitsu engagement with HCC is a partnership framework. “The success of our partnership with Fujitsu stems from their knowledge of our business, our drivers, what’s important to us as a Council, our culture, and how it fits together. Consequently, we are able to consider what Fujitsu can do for us beyond simply IT.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION//

FUJITSU
+64 9 921 8093
www.fujitsu.co.nz