Growing Your Data Center, Not Your Overhead

© Copyright 3/13/2015 BMC Software, Inc1

Growing Your Data Center,

Not Your Overhead

AutomationSelf

Service

BusinessBenefits


Dean Forster

Growing your Data Center, not your Overhead


Dean Forster

Technical Director and OSS Manager | Macquarie Hosting

Australian Business Telecommunications Service Provider

Hosting focus, with Telco background(Voice, Data, Mobile, Hosting, Co-Location)

for Corporate and Government26 Data Points of Presence in AUS/NZ with 3 Data

Centers(BMC Customer since 2001 with Remedy, and 2011 with Automation)


Life as a small company….

SKIL

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kno

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Spee

dGURU Supports first 3 customers

Build Run

Your ‘one guru’, does all the work


Life as a small company….

SKIL

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dGURU

Supports first 10 customers/users

Build Run

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d

NOVICE

More customers = hire new people


Life as a large company……

SKIL

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d4 Novices

40 Customers/users

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10:1 Ratio

Even more customers, more people, a scale


Using a scale enabler

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4 Novices 60

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d15:1 Ratio

100:1 Ratio 400

500:1 Ratio 2000

Using a Scale Enabler, to reduce effort/overhead

10:1 Ratio


Why is the right scale important

Sales Effectiveness

Operations Effectiveness

DeliveryEffectiveness

ServiceEffectiveness

Good Scale

Better Scale

Less ProfitPoor Scale

Less Customer Satisfaction

Tickets per Operator

Builds per Engineer

Customers per Rep

Deals per BDM

Tasks per person

Too manypeople Too many

tasks

15:1

4:1

9:1

3:1

Scal

e

Various measures in the business

Poor

Good

Better

Poor

Good

Better


Scale enablers

Standardization

Managed ITIL BPE

Documented Non-custom Repeatable

Sharing Quality KMS

Teams Specialist Communication

Scripts Tools Orchestration

Online Integrated End to end

Process

Knowledge

Structure

Automation

Self-Service

Technology Accelerators


Using scale enablers at Macquarie Telecom:

• ITIL focus with standard products

• Dedicate teams/re-structure

• Process improvement and management

Business structure

• Reduce customer execution time from 56 days to 2 hours

• Online contract and commercial agreements

• Interaction via an online portal

Customer self-service

• Remove all human effort where possible

• Improve operations efficiency

• Offer unique value

• Platform for continual improvement

Automation

Executed over 6+ years with minor

gains.

80% of ‘change’ business is now

online.

Immediate 20% efficiency

improvement


The

automated

business


Atrium Orchestrator: Robot

Other Business Systems

Front End Portal- Service portal- Online pricing

Assets/Services

CMDB

Internal Portal- Internal changes

- Service Request Management

Test/Dev

Other Management Systems

Reporting

BMC Atrium Orchestrator

BillingCRMTicketsOrders

Alarming (SMARTS)Perf MgmtConfig Mgmt

BSA (Server)BNA (Network)StorageVMWare

Duplicate assets and systems

SpotfireSQL

SQL

Structure Process

Standards Knowledge


How much automation?

What scripts can do

What puppet/chef can do

What automation can do

Server List

Patch Servers

Server List

Patch Servers

Report Redo

Server List

Patch Servers

Test ReportMissing Patches

AuthChange Mgmt

AlertRetry

Change Mgmt

fails

fails

fails

Server O/S Patching Example

3000 servers per month

Informed


Examples of Automation

Operational:- First Time Fix/Ticket enrichment

- Process triggering/Disaster Recovery- O/S patching

Initial Focus

Service Build:- Build workflows

(VM/Network/SAN/Firewall/AV/Backup)- Order linkages

- Automated test/validate- From click to bill automation

Largest Scale

Enabler

Information Extraction:- Service inventory updating

- Application inventory- Data correlationCustomer

Value and Innovation

Solution Builds:- Parallel processing

- Solution end-to-end

FutureFocus


Business Results: Automation Scale Enablers

15%Efficiency

improvement

5%Revenue

Improvement

20%Efficiency

improvement

15%Efficiency

improvement

15%Revenue

Improvement

20%cSAT

improvement

Internal Automation External Automation Customer Automation


Help the

customer

help

themselves


Online Ordering/Self-Service 60+ tasks on offer

Automated and manual order

processing


Extend the buying cycle….

Where typical Online Ordering works

You have this

It performs X well, with Y Capacity

I would like to buy?

BuildTest and

handover

You now have this

It performs X well, with Y Capacity

Needs identify Needs fulfilled

$

Alert

AutomatedeCommerceReportAutomated Automated Automated Report


Customer usage

Increased revenue

Reduced errors

Efficiency improvement

Business Results: Self-Service Automation Scale Enabler

80%Customer Adoption

1/3Less Order

Issues

20+Days billing

earlier

10%‘Small Order’

RevenueIncrease

20%Staff

Reduction


It all went ok, didn’t it??

Learnings


Measures of Success…

Business target reached

We nowhave it?

Lower staffnumbers

Revenueincrease?

Customersatisfaction?

Engagement Happystaff

S.M.A.R.T

Simple!

Focus on one obvious business problem with an eye on results.


Other Business Systems

People- Support- Developers

Assets

CMDB

Users/Customers

Other Management Systems

Reporting

Automation change overlay…

Automation SystemsOverlay

• Limit Change• Limit Risk• Costs more/short term• Improve acceptance


Limit Business Change…

Tried and true



Tried and true

New/quicker/parallel



Tried and true

New/quicker/parallel Change executed

Business change by stealth


New costs/overhead: Maintain what has been

delivered.Support

Continuous improvement

Support growth and expansion.

Pays the bills

Builds a profile, enables innovation

Equiv 1 developer

(20 tickets pm)

Equiv 2 developers

(Annual savings target)

Planned ‘spare’ effort.

innovation projects

Macquarie Experience

Discretionary projects

Plan for support overhead…


Key Takeaways• Scale Enablers, grow your Data Center, without growing your overheads

– Automation Technology: • Long chain automation with orchestration

• Focus on B2C first (greatest business gains helping customers)

– Self Service Overlay: • Online/self-help/ordering

• Extend buying cycle

• Focus on one obvious business problem to solve

– Easy to understand business benefits:

Growing your Data Center, not your overhead


Thank You.

blog: www.thebannedtechnologist.com

www.macquarietelecom.com