Nampak, Africa`s largest packaging manufacturer, has selected Citrix access infrastructure software as the platform of choice to underpin its strategy that will see Nampak Management Services providing a group IT service to all its business units.
Nampak is in the process of rolling out its key business applications using Citrix MetaFrame XPe Presentation Server, Feature Release 2, to 3 000 users in 120 sites around SA. Nampak went live with its first application, JD Edwards OneWorld, through Citrix in May 2003.
Toni Serra, IT Manager (South Africa) at Nampak Management Services, commented: "Our decision to purchase the Citrix solution was fuelled by Nampak`s drive to improve IT service delivery to our business in the future, as well as to lower and stabilise the cost of computing over time."
Nampak had a decentralised IT environment where every business unit had its own IT shop. This resulted in a number of different legacy systems being developed and different platforms and IT infrastructures throughout the business.
"We wanted to centralise our infrastructure so that we could eventually move towards a consumption-based costing model, where we define our users according to their needs and provide them with a basket of services. Now, because of our centralised IT model that has been enabled by Citrix, we will be able to provide these services cost-effectively," said Serra.
Serra explained that Nampak started the process of simplifying its IT environment two years ago when it took a decision to standardise on key applications and platforms. "We decided at the time that it would be best for the business to standardise on one ERP solution, JD Edwards," he said.
Nampak had a variety of bespoke and packaged ERP systems, and over time the packaging company wanted to reduce the number of applications in its business units.
At the same time Nampak decided to standardise on Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft, and Comparex Africa, a Gold Solutions Provider of the Citrix Solutions Network (CSN), became its service provider of choice.
"In order to improve our ability to achieve synergies and get business benefits from our IT system, we then started looking at solutions which would help us centralise our environment. We decided that Citrix was the right solution for our environment. Citrix offers value on top of Microsoft, which we had already standardised on," said Serra.
"Citrix will enable us to see benefits and cost reductions in four areas: desktop hardware, bandwidth, management capabilities and effectiveness of application deployment."
Because Citrix access infrastructure software enables applications to be installed, processed, maintained and supported on central servers, turning any device into a thin client, hardware upgrades are not required to access the latest applications.
"We will not initially buy too many new thin-client devices since we want to extend the life of our existing PCs by using them as `locked-down` thin-clients," said Serra.
Nampak hopes to get a three-year life span out of its existing PCs, and then get an additional two years out of any new thin-client devices that are purchased. In the future, Nampak sees about 70% to 80% of its users accessing applications via thin-client devices, which will provide hardware costs savings to the company.
Serra added that because Nampak`s strategy is to offer one single ERP solution running in a single data centre, bandwidth was an issue. "We had to upgrade our bandwidth which was achieved when we implemented a Telkom ATM backbone in April this year. However, we would have required additional bandwidth to accommodate traffic on the backbone due to our single data centre strategy," he said.
"If we did not select Citrix our bandwidth requirements and costs would have been considerably higher."
Due to centralised management capabilities provided by Citrix MetaFrame XPe Presentation Server, Nampak can now effectively manage many of its applications from a single point. "Due to this capability we expect to see a reduction in the cost of technology resources and man time," said Serra.
A final benefit Nampak will realise through Citrix is on the application deployment side. "Centralising our IT environment will also allow us to easily and quickly roll-out applications, such as our ERP suite," he said.
"With the Citrix model, updates to client code are performed centrally on the server, reducing the impact on users and IT staff when new applications are deployed. New applications can be quickly replicated to multiple Citrix MetaFrame XPe Presentation Servers and then made available to users in minutes, leading to near-immediate access and productivity," explained Chris Norton, Citrix Southern Africa`s country manager.
Serra concluded: "Our previous IT infrastructure would not have allowed us to explore advantages to be gained with supply chain integration, e-commerce and B2B integration. Now, with Citrix, we can take IT at Nampak to the next level."
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