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Lecture 14

Lecture 14. Case Study Postgirot Bank and Provment AB. Announcements. 3-4pm today for those who gave me draft of business plan. Quiz. Case Issues. Industrial Engineering approach to managing corporate server capacity

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Lecture 14

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  1. Lecture 14 Case Study Postgirot Bank and Provment AB

  2. Announcements • 3-4pm today for those who gave me draft of business plan

  3. Quiz

  4. Case Issues • Industrial Engineering approach to managing corporate server capacity • Software measurement systems used to keep track of how various components of mainframe configuration are being used • Systems try to manage risk of over or under capacity • Case describes new methodology for applying this approach to servers rather than software

  5. Postgirot • Swedish-based company providing large, cashless settlement system • Technology is core • Potentially for sale and has strong need to be seen as efficient to reduce job turnover post-merger • IT strategic in handling 1 million transactions per day • Should be at leading edge of development and operating practice • Leading-edge developer of IT with a massive effort to webify entire company • Located in very IT-friendly country • Must be available 24/7 • Leading edge measurement tools is good move

  6. Postgirot IT unit • 400 people • $74m budget • Unevenness in workflow • Peak hourly volumes four times average hour • Deeply dependent on reliability • Built on underground information-processing center to hold central computer and server farm • 158 staff focused primarily on development of capabilities to support organization • Cost of services historically of secondary concern to getting capabilities installed • Culture of speed and effectiveness instead • Stage 2 contagion company on Nolan scale • Substantial excess capacity discovered on servers with ability to cut costs around 5% without harming productivity

  7. Provment A-B • Staff has had significant experience developing software for measuring mainframe performance in OS/390 environments • Recently expanded tool to UNIX systems servers • New twist on old theme, relying on industrial engineering tools in operations environment • Driving excess costs out of network without degrading server is key • Recently developed new software package to measure the utilization of server capacity • Complex CPU performance measurement system, internal memory utilization, I/O capacity and disk storage use • Measures for each server how many devices are being utilized • Unobtrusive, takes up less than 0.5% of CPU capacity • Package hasn’t been validated in this form yet

  8. Key aspects of new package • Intensely secure • Tightly controlled user system access • Designed to keep servers running if disabled (even though this is not anticipated to happen) • All staff for installment provided by Provment as a service • Eliminating training for Postgirot staff • Lowering barrier for first trial • Maximum time to install on all servers 60 days to ensure rapid access by management to results • All installation costs added together not more than cost of 4 UNIX servers

  9. End results for UNIX servers • Discovered average workload of first 48 servers less than 10% during prime shift • Up to 40 servers could be eliminated • Not unexpected • Machine consolidations expect to save 500k in one time, eliminating capital investment and $1.4m per year (5% of IT budget) • Each server on full-cost basis about 3 times more expensive than anticipated • Management didn’t realize cost of what they were running • Can they generate these savings? • System showed high potential for UNIX servers being combined • NT/WIN servers suggested as next step

  10. Issues • Quality of analysis in establishing cost coefficients – new area/idea • Potential misuse of Postgirot data by Provment • How sensitive will system be to peaks? • Betting important measurement function on new company? • No mention of applications, which are sensitive to down time and should be on reliable mainframes • Concern that these issues are addressed piecemeal rather than holistic

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