Patni helps leading North American insurance major set up a systems management server, and centralize IT infrastructure management and application maintenance and support

The Client
One of the largest auto, life, health, and fire insurance providers in North America, the client's 17,000 agents and 68,000 employees serve over 78 million policies, and more than 1.9 million bank accounts in the region.

The Challenge
The client's business, spread across several geographically disparate regions, grew at a tremendous pace. As the business grew, the client accumulated a huge IT infrastructure including a large user base of over 180,000 desktops, an equally large agent network, and more than 22,000 applications running on as many servers. Managing these applications and installing patches on the workstations and servers proved to be a humungous task for the client's internal IT team. Installing the Operating System image and the application to load Workstations\Servers was another challenge both in terms of resource requirements and cost. In fact, software installation, support, and maintenance accounted for a major chunk of its IT infrastructure maintenance cost.

To facilitate these tasks in a cost effective and efficient manner, the client decided to implement a systems management server that would enable its IT administrators to administer the IT infrastructure and install applications and patches from a central location without choking the network bandwidth. It, however, did not have the necessary trained resources to support such a SMS setup or the Server\Workstation load process.

The client wanted to partner with a systems management specialist to set up a Systems Management Server, automate inventory management of workstations, deploy software, and provide both onsite as well offshore maintenance and support.

The Solution
The client partnered with Patni for its expertise in providing infrastructure management services and its immense experience in administering SMS for fortune 500 companies. Patni collaborated with the client's existing IT team and took on the onus of providing uninterrupted and ongoing support to the client's IT infrastructure. The scope of the engagement included providing second level SMS support, monitoring SMS server performance, and event alerts, troubleshooting SMS site server incidents, managing and troubleshooting the software distribution process and the load process, and resolving issues raised by business partners via helpdesk tickets.

Patni adopted ITIL practices for Service Management and put in place a centralized L1/L2 support unit to handle reactive and proactive incident management as well as service calls. Patni leveraged its expertise to not only install applications and implement patches for various client projects but also monitor and support the same.

The highly trained and experienced team from Patni worked with the client's IT infrastructure management to support the SMS servers and client deployment over the enterprise network. It also provided several primary functions for the client's primary and secondary sites across all its locations in North America. This included software distribution, inventory management, enterprise sever release, enterprise workstation release, agency workstation release, software distribution alternate support, and helpdesk facilities.

The Benefits
Patni's solution helped the client automate the process of installation and patch application. This eliminated the need to visit individual workstations to perform management functions such as desktop hardware and software inventory and asset management, software distribution and updates, and patch management. As a result the client was able to optimize its existing resources and reduce labor costs considerably. Other benefits include:

• Maximum cost visibility on account of SLA-based delivery model
• All incidents, events and problems are addressed through service desk tickets resulting in enhanced user support
• Centralized support to all the client's locations leading to a streamlined service delivery process and cost benefits
• 24x7 onsite support across multiple time zones leading to quick issue resolution and minimal backlog.

The Technology

• Operating system:
• Windows XP
• Windows Server 2003
• Ticketing Tools:
• HP Service Desk
• Software:
• Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003