ProPac

Situation - BT is at the very heart of a global communications revolution where Internet, mobility, broadband and multimedia technologies are playing an increasingly vital role in both business and society. The launch of BT Ignite in July 2000 alongside BTopenworld and BT Wireless (recently renamed mm02), has proved timely in a marketplace where businesses of all sizes are asking who can meet the full range of their communications needs?

Problem - In order to determine the correct levels of support and maintenance for their Cisco based networking infrastructure and comply with the requirements of the Cisco maintenance contract, BT Ignite had a requirement to identify what networking assets were available at which locations.

Implication - The lack of accurate asset information can increase the risks attached with inadequate levels of support assigned to an organisations corporate infrastructure. Asset information can also be a valuable tool for defining the best sparing and distribution strategies which when optimised helps reduce overall operating costs.

Need - BT Ignite who manage networks on behalf of their customers traditionally have undertaken this inventory process manually at the take on of any new customer, if this process could be accurately undertaken electronically the gains in efficiency and cost effectiveness would be major. Having recently undertaken a physical audit of the network it was decided that a comparison of the results from the two methodologies would prove to be a useful exercise.

Business Solution

Scope - Engage 3net’s Netlocate™ asset and inventory management service in order to discover, audit and report on assigned networks for BT Ignite.

Solution - Network Inventories and Asset identification is never the most exciting of tasks to undertake, and has traditionally involved large amounts of manpower to visit each location and detail the equipment that is installed there. Yet this information is always requested by the finance department for asset management and for maintenance companies that need to spare appropriately for the network.

The procedures, processes and tools used in our network inventory service have been developed over a number of years to provide a service that delivers meaningful and accurate information. The information was collected over a period of 6 days from a total of 6000 devices spread literally all over the UK (other audits have covered multiple countries).

The reporting phase, where the information collected is mapped to real product codes and the equipment mapped to the appropriate cities and addresses, created reports that provided meaningful and accurate information that matched favourably with the information collected manually over a much longer period.

Concerns that the customer had over the network impact, security and confidentiality were proved to be unfounded and the exercise has proved a good foundation to a productive ongoing relationship.

Deliverables - A number of reports detailing the location, device types, incumbent modules, product codes and prices were presented in electronic format.

Business Benefits

The Netlocate™ asset management service helped BT Ignite to assess the correct levels of maintenance support for their networking infrastructure. This helped reduce the risks to the business and overall operating costs. Adequate support also leads to better customer satisfaction and continued business efficiency.