IBM Case Study
Managing the IT system for any global company brings significant challenges. Those challenges become magnified when you’re the IT manager of a nearly $10 billion aerospace and defense company with more than 50,000 IT assets (including PCs, servers and handheld devices) sup-porting 30,000 employees worldwide. Add to that the varied hardware, software and systems of four different companies from recent acquisitions.
BAE Systems streamlines IT services
and asset management with IBM Maximo solutions.
Overview
BAE Systems, a global defense and aerospace company, switched from a legacy solution to IBM Maximo Asset and Service Management software to streamline IT systems management and prepare for future changes. Challenge
Gain global visibility of an infrastructure featuring 50,000 IT assets — i ncluding the diverse systems of four recently acquired companies — and supporting 30,000 employees
Solution
A centralized Web-based platform for asset management that helps automate implementation of IT Infrastructure Library® (ITIL®)
best practices and prepares the organization for change
Key Benefits
Enabled proactive maintenance
and system upgrades; expected reduction in mean-time-to-repair (MTTR) and support costs; allows staff to focus on other
core responsibilities
“These days,
maintaining ITIL
standards is an absolute
necessity. IBM Maximo
removes the headache
of trying to keep up with
them by automating
compliance so we can
focus on other core
responsibilities.”
Gaining a global view of IT assets
This is Dawn Allison’s mission as manager of systems integration at BAE Systems, Inc. She needs to make sure the 800-person IT support team can respond quickly to system performance issues, answer employee questions and maintain maxi-mum uptime without becoming overwhelmed. She also needs to make sure the global defense and aerospace company’s IT systems will scale and evolve as the company does.
To streamline IT systems management and prepare for future changes, BAE Systems switched from a legacy solution to IBM Maximo Asset and Service Management software (formerly MRO Software Maximo Enterprise Suite IT Service Management platform). Having used Maximo software to manage its enterprise assets, BAE Systems was familiar with the solution’s capabilities. Maximo software provides Allison and her team with the global visibility and responsiveness they need to help optimize the performance of the company’s massive IT infrastructure around the clock. It also shifts some responsibility for troubleshooting system issues from Allison’s team to employees via an intuitive self-help environment that helps save time and money.
IT vision challenges
As a worldwide company, BAE Systems is not afraid to expand by acquisition. But in addition to directly affecting human resources and payroll, adding more companies means adding IT infrastructures that may not integrate with BAE Systems data center assets. This discontinuity meant that IT managers didn’t always know what hardware and software new employees were running on their desktops, whether their systems were due for important upgrades, and whether the systems they were running were vulnerable to cyber threats.
“We didn’t have a good handle on who was running what system and what skill sets they had within the four new companies BAE Systems acquired,” says Allison. “That’s a major hurdle for IT managers who need to maintain consistency and maximum performance across the entire IT infrastructure.”
The company’s previous service management dashboard for gauging the infra-structure’s overall health was limited and required significant customization. This meant that executives would either have to hire an outside programmer to write
“The move to IBM
Maximo software
is largely about
eliminating the
reactive firefighting we
sometimes faced with a
system that didn’t allow
us to see problems
before they snowballed.”
code and then “babysit” the system, or the company’s IT staff would have to oper-ate on assumptions rather than facts. The IT staff also did not have a reliable or comprehensive way of tracking ongoing projects.
Part of the dashboard’s limitations stemmed from the existing solution’s client-based environment. The IT staff had to work to “pull” information from employees’ desktops worldwide to see what they were using. If the desktop was turned off, information about its contents was inaccessible. As a result, gaining a snapshot of the overall infrastructure was difficult, took days and was often incomplete. BAE Systems executives realized that to simplify how the company manages such a global network, it would need to change from a client-based solution to one that IT staff could manage centrally. They also realized that getting employ-ees involved in managing their systems and fixing problems would reduce the number of calls flooding the service center, mean-time-to-repair (MTTR) and associated costs.
Getting clarity
Since 1997, BAE Systems has used Maximo software internally to manage assets as well as provide enterprise asset management (EAM) implementation and inte-gration services to its Department of Defense customers. In each case, executives saw that streamlined facilities management processes were paying off in inventory cost savings, improved productivity and real-time access to detailed asset infor-mation. Though BAE Systems currently runs several asset management systems across the company, the majority of its business units use Maximo software. The company is currently evaluating standardizing on Maximo software across the enterprise.
The Maximo software history played a crucial role in the BAE Systems evaluation of IT service management products by giving customers and internal managers a global view of assets so they can maintain inventory, accelerate repairs and stream-line workflow. According to Allison, Maximo Asset and Service Management software offered the stable, user-friendly platform, Web-based environment and flexibility BAE Systems needed to manage its global infrastructure effectively. Transitioning from a client-based platform to a Web-based platform means IT staff can quickly gain a global view of IT assets and effectively manage them.
Key Components
Software“The move to Maximo software is largely about eliminating the reactive firefighting we sometimes faced with a system that didn’t allow us to see problems before they snowballed,” says Allison. “Deploying Maximo software should reduce downtime because our IT team now has real-time information about the infrastructure’s performance so it can identify and fix problems before they affect productivity.” Maximo Asset and Service Management software helps BAE Systems adhere to industry standards by helping the company follow Information Technology Infrastructure Library(ITIL) best practices. The solution helps automate implementa-tion of ITIL guidelines, helping the company to gain excepimplementa-tional performance from its IT assets. “These days, maintaining ITIL standards is an absolute necessity,” says Allison. “IBM Maximo software removes the headache of trying to keep up with them by automating compliance, so we can focus on other core responsibilities.”
A roadmap for further service management efficiency
IBM Maximo Asset and Service Management software will also be the cornerstone for future BAE Systems IT service management projects to streamline systems man-agement. BAE Systems will capitalize on the software’s Web architecture
to create a knowledgebase where employees can access the self-help FAQ sec-tion of their intranet to resolve common issues that users encounter. For example, employees will be able to find straightforward answers to questions about why their e-mail application won’t launch or why a given server may be running slowly. If employees can’t find the information they need, they’ll be able to electronically submit a trouble ticket and IT staff will address the problem. IT staff will enter the problem, its cause and the completed repair into Maximo Asset and Service Management software so that if the problem arises again, IT staff will know the history. To bolster service level agreements, enable on-time and efficient problem resolution, and help maintain quality, BAE Systems plans to send surveys to employees that will inform IT managers how staff resolve employee IT issues. Information from a trouble ticket in Maximo Asset and Service Management software will be linked to an automated application that will send a survey to employees that have recently had IT performance problems.
“Our goal is to gather
information from
various business units
and provide that to
executives who make
decisions about our
operations. IBM Maximo
software has proven
to be very effective in
giving us an accurate
view of assets and their
histories, and could
play a key role in an
enterprise-wide asset
management strategy.”
– Shelley Rowley, Program Manager,BAE Systems also plans to use Maximo Asset and Service Manage-ment software in conjunction with an electronic software delivery application to help push out application upgrades and new software to employees. The software will keep an automatically updated list of the new applications that have been rolled out to employees. The company also expects to use Maximo Asset and Service Manage-ment software to help with IT project planning by drilling down to see who would be affected by converting all employee desktops from Microsoft® Outlook® to IBM Lotus Notes® and Domino® messaging and collaboration software, for example. This feature will be beneficial as BAE Systems continues to acquire new companies and broaden the scope of Allison’s IT service management responsibilities. To improve how the global company tracks inventory, Shelley Rowley, BAE Systems Asset Management Practice program manager, plans to consolidate the task under one
enterprise asset management application. “Our goal is to gather information from various business units and provide that to executives who make decisions about our operations,” she says. “IBM Maximo software has proven to be very effective in giving us an accurate view of assets and their histories, and could play a key role in an enterprise-wide asset management strategy.”
For more information
Please contact your IBM sales repre-sentative or IBM Business Partner. Visit our Web site at:
ibm.com/tivoli
For more information on IBM Maximo solutions visit: www.mro.com
You can get even more out of Tivoli® software by participating in
independently run Tivoli User Groups around the world. Learn about opportunities near you at:
www.tivoli-ug.org
For more information about BAE Systems, visit: www.baesystems.com
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Produced in the United States of America 3-07
All Rights Reserved
Domino, IBM, the IBM logo, Lotus, Lotus Notes, Notes, Maximo and Tivoli are trademarks of Interna-tional Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries or both.
ITIL is a registered trademark, and a registered community trademark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
IT Infrastructure Library is a registered trademark of the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency which is now part of the Office of Govern-ment Commerce.
Microsoft and Outlook are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries or both.
Other company, product or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.
This case study is an example of how one customer uses IBM products. There is no guarantee of comparable results.
References in this publication to IBM products and services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates.
