"When you have more than 800 employees working in offices and depots countrywide, managing the IT structure can be a headache, particularly if everyone is using a different brand of PC, different server and different applications," says Christo Fourie, IT manager for Total South Africa, the fourth largest oil company in the country. "That was the situation at Total four years ago."
"It was decided that standardisation of the servers, desktop and laptop PCs was necessary to reduce costs, downtime, support and maintenance" says Fourie. "We needed a PC architecture that would be able to run along side of our midrange servers and, after extensive research, we settled for Compaq as the best option, basing our decision on performance, quality and total cost of ownership (TCO). Previously equipment was sourced from different suppliers, creating a nightmare when it came to tracking machines, making warranty claims and providing support."
"We decided to align ourselves with a preferred supplier, in this case national infrastructure provider Datacentrix which is a Compaq channel partner. We worked in conjunction with Datacentrix and Compaq to ensure that the best machines for the job were purchased. Our procurement policy dictates that we purchase the latest entry level units for the majority of applications with medium- to high-end PCs reserved for only specific applications such as CAD in order to avoid wasting resources on over-spec`d or end-of-life equipment. The only real variable is RAM which is upgraded as needed."
"The roll-out took two years to complete and was something of a logistical nightmare as old systems had to be replaced at different stages in order to minimise downtime during the transition. Our server environment was also a mix-and-match situation and when Total decided to move its head office in Braamfontein to its new building in Rosebank, we saw it as a golden opportunity to convert completely to Compaq ProLiant servers. The changeover took place over a long weekend with our IT department working from the Friday until the Monday evening. When the 340 staff arrived for work on Tuesday, the system was up and running without a single hitch. The Compaq ProLiant servers have proved their value with their robust and unfailing performance. We recently had to upgrade the RAM in one server, a process that took about eight minutes and which was performed while the unit was still on-line, without interrupting network operations. There aren`t very many machines out there that can do that."
Adds Fourie, "We now have a total of 44 Compaq ProLiant servers running Microsoft Windows NT along side three midrange servers and hundreds of Compaq DeskPros and Armada notebooks installed all over the country. This year alone, Compaq has supplied Total with more than 200 DeskPros and 40 Armada notebooks as part of Total`s gradual move away from being a paper-based company to being largely digital, a move that has changed the way our people work. Communication is almost completely electronic, right down to booking meeting rooms.
Says Henry Ferreira, Managing Director, Compaq Africa Region, "The relationship between Total, Compaq and Datacentrix is a good example of how companies should work together. Total is now looking at exploring new technologies such as Storage Area Networks using Compaq`s Open SAN approach, given new impetus recently by IBM`s announcement to support the Open SAN strategy. The company is also looking at on-line procurement which would enable it to co-ordinate the purchase of new IT equipment from quote to installation.
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