Broxtowe Borough Council

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Broxtowe Borough Council

Fujitsu and Broxtowe’s in-house IT staff set up a project team with the aim of completing the implementation of the new Trimetra before December 2000.

The Challenge

The Borough of Broxtowe lies to the west of the UK City of Nottingham and covers the towns of Beeston, Stapleford, Kimberley and Eastwood. Broxtowe had been running OpenVME® on a Series 39 mainframe for various business applications used by its 350 office staff. This mainframe had provided extremely reliable service for many years but was showing its age in terms of running costs. A number of UNIX® applications were also used running on several servers under the now obsolete DRS/NX operating system. In order to meet long term business objectives, Broxtowe developed a strategic plan to reduce cost of ownership and improve service levels. Investment was made in new technology that would allow the continued support of OpenVME, consolidate existing UNIX applications and gradually introduce Microsoft® Windows® functionality to users. The Council’s longer term plan was to move from OpenVME and UNIX processors to one central processor running Microsoft Windows surrounded by PC servers. It therefore wanted to ensure that it could protect its investment through reuse of the OpenVME and UNIX components.

The Solution

In May 2000 Broxtowe issued an invitation to tender. The prime requirement was for a well planned and executed transition to address both current needs and longer term plans. Broxtowe found that many IT service providers were either not interested in managing a gradual transition or suggested alternatives that would not have been cost effective. In October the contract was awarded to Fujitsu. As Richard Gledhill, Assistant Director of Computing said, “Fujitsu’s proposal to install a Trimetra® DL and then introduce Microsoft Exchange enabled us to meet our 5 year plan, provided value for money, introduced new technology right from the start and gave us a stepping stone that would take us towards a total Microsoft environment.”

The Benefits

Both users and staff enjoy the reliability and performance of the new equipment. Broxtowe now has a common platform that supports OpenVME, UNIX and Microsoft Windows. This allows for convenient centralised management and gives the potential for further improvement to service levels. Some batch run times have been halved; disk space is no longer an operational constraint and monthly maintenance costs are much lower. Overall IT costs are down by 11%. In addition, it provides the flexibility for a migration towards Microsoft Windows in the longer term. The Fujitsu solution also included centralised data security through an upgrade to Broxtowe’s robotic tape library and the implementation of Legato Networker® to enable back-up of the UNIX, Microsoft Windows and OpenVME systems. “The way we moved forward with our five year plan shows that our strategy was right, particularly as e-government requirements have since been introduced. Microsoft Exchange will lead us in this direction; without upgrading the network to Microsoft Exchange we would not be ready,”said Richard Gledhill.

The Implementation

Fujitsu and Broxtowe’s in-house IT staff set up a project team with the aim of completing the implementation of the new Trimetra before December 2000. Work began in November; the transfer took four weeks and was completed on time. The Council’s core secretariat moved onto Microsoft Exchange after implementation in March 2001. Next stage is the completion of the consolidation or transfer to Microsoft Windows of all UNIX systemsduring 2002.

The Expertise

“Fujitsu understands how local government works andhas been very good on the project management side”,said Richard Gledhill. “We are getting the help we needto invest in our infrastructure. Now we have a platformthat will deliver cost savings, improved service levels and UNIX consolidation and at the same time move ourapplications towards a Microsoft environment.”