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Infrastructure Solutions’ Automated Change Management Solution Helps Clients Improve Productivity and Lower Costs

Infrastructure Solutions’ Automated Change Management (ACM) helps clients improve productivity and lower costs by automating the change processing required by many clients who are running Microsoft Windows operating systems and using Citrix-based access.

Team Members (l to r): Garry Scheer, Laura Sellers, Alex Deininger, Joe Anaya, Steve Bartolini, Renee Wayland, Florence Campbell and Larry Ray. Not pictured: Joe Bengfort, Mark Eimer, Dak Frisbie, Alex Gonzales, Josh Petrone, and Brian Queary.

Infrastructure Solutions’ service delivery teams use Perot Systems’ Operational Process Application Suite (OPAS) to manage changes to our clients’ IT environments. Clients with 100+ servers in a large, “server farm,” especially those running Microsoft Windows operating systems and using Citrix-based access, follow vendor- recommended ”best practices,” which include weekly server reboots. These weekly reboots require multiple, recurring changes and the closing of the change records is manually intensive and time consuming. The OPAS application team is often asked to allow users to programmatically close change records to reduce the labor needed and to ensure adherence to change windows.

Missing a change window, i.e. an unsuccessful change, can mean a missed service level for a client or a missed key performance indicator for a service delivery team. Change window adherence is particularly rigorous for the Stanford account, and an automated change management process needs methods that are recoverable and auditable. To help meet Stanford’s requirements, the OPAS, Automation and Monitoring, and Batch Enablement teams collaborated with the Stanford account team to create an effective solution to automate change processing.

As a result of the collaboration, ACM was designed as a solution that will put a change record in a WIP (work-in-progress) status, update the installation notes when necessary, and close the change record using a disposition code that is related to the completion status of the change. Data is passed between AutoSys (the tool for the Batch Enablement service), the Event Consolidator and OPAS.

Mark Eimer, director, Technology and Innovation, and ACM project sponsor said, “Today, we have 150 servers in our Citrix farm and plan to add 200 more in a very short period of time. We are already experiencing the benefits from implementing the Automated Change Management solution, our support costs are down and FTE costs associated with the manual effort are now being redirected to focus on other automation solutions using the Automated Change Management solution as a foundation that has been built to further reduce costs and increase productivity.”

“Automated Change Management provides our clients with capabilities to automate recurring change processes and there are many accounts that have expressed the need,” says Garry Scheer, service delivery manager for Business Systems. “The use of Automated Change Management can significantly improve accuracy of change management records which can significantly improve Service Level compliance.”

The creative solution designed to address the needs of the Stanford account will now be seen across the company, as many clients prepare to implement ACM in order to reap the benefits of higher productivity and lower costs.