The Juggernaut of Change has a Microsoft logo – Please help

Dear All

The Juggernaut of Change has a Microsoft logo on it and its coming our way.

Terry and I have managed Metro’s IT services for the last 8 years and during this period the company has grown from £4m to over £10m and is on its way to £16m. When we joined, there was a G3 iMac running Quickmail Pro Server and now we have 6 Xserves, a HP Proliant. Imaging and Asset Management via Absolute Manage, Helpdesk vis Webhelpdesk and Network Monitoring via Intermapper. Client wise we have about 60 intel and Aluminium iMacs, 20 Macbook Pros, 15 Desktop PCs and 15 More Windows laptops. A good set up.

Since Apple dropped the Xserve back in January, the pro Microsoft Directors have been campaigning for a move to Microsoft and there is now a proposal before the board which if accepted will result in Terry and I being made redundant and the whole of the company’s IT moved over to Windows and contracted out to a facilities company.

The person who will be running the contract with the facilities company is a business analyst and filemaker developer, there will be no one employed by Metro who knows anything about IT and the company will be completely reliant on 3rd party service companies.

We have been told we can put in a proposal ourselves to save our jobs but this must include us managing the systems ourselves, obviously the odds are really stacked against us but I think its worth a try, especially as the proposal doesn’t make must sense.

We were told this January that the company would be moving to an ERP tool, probably SAP Business One in 2012/3, if the company does this the whole windows terminal services setup becomes redundant and so does the windows desktop. And then rolling out a mobile device to our 500 field personnel becomes even more expensive, Exchange licenses plus Business One licenses on devices with Windows OSs.

Below is a Technology Brief written by the filemaker guy, I’d be very grateful for any words of support or ideas on how to stave off this change and keep our jobs until Business One comes along.

Proposed Managed Solution
Bearing in mind this is a proposed solution and is subject to change based on the results of further investigation by potential suppliers. The managed IT architecture environment can be split into Servers and Data, Managed Solution, Client Machines and Peripherals:

Servers and Data
Firstly, the server platform will change from Apple to Microsoft Windows. The servers will be virtualised, which maximises their resources and reduces cost as fewer physical servers will be required. The servers will be upgraded as and when required by the supplier.

The majority of the physical servers will be located in external data centres which are managed jointly by staff on the premises and remotely by the supplier. Windows servers, Firewalls, and SANs (if required) are all in racks either owned or rented by the supplier and provide the majority of the server-side functionality such as virtualisation, data storage, document access, and application hosting.

The data will either be mirrored to a secondary data centre, or backed up to a secondary data centre, therefore minimising the data loss if the primary data centre goes down irretrievably. This model is built on the premise of resilience and availability with optimal levels of uptime, thus limiting Metro’s exposure in instances of disaster.

Documents will be accessible via a networked drive, and will be structured, for the time being, in a hierarchical manner similar to the current set up. Email will be migrated from Mac Mail to Microsoft Exchange, therefore provisioning shared calendaring and true group emailing, on a single industry standard platform.

FileMaker and Access Dimensions will be virtualised, allowing remote users and local users alike to connect in a more stable environment – if the TS (terminal service) connection is lost, the database remains unaffected in the state is was left in upon logging back into the TS account. Accessing FileMaker via TS negates the need to connect remotely to FileMaker, therefore increasing performance for remote users, and reducing the version update process when a new version of the system goes live.

Managed Solution
The supplier will take ownership of the server, client, and peripheral support. Support will be provided 24/7 and resulting uptimes will be in the order of 99.99%. Server and client machines will be monitored and errors will be fixed remotely where possible with site visits performed by engineers when the need arises.

Requests for change will be formally sent through to the supplier to action, for example the creation of a new account or the installation of additional software. The supplier will fulfil the requests centrally at the server side, or, in instances where onsite presence is required, during a site visit. Therefore negligible on-site IT capability will be needed.

Data will be backed up and the backups monitored and verified by the external supplier’s processes (either automated or manual).

Client Machines and Peripherals
As the supplier takes ownership of the client machines, printers, phones and presentation equipment, the reporting of errors across the whole of IT and Comms will be through a central phone number or helpdesk front end. The supplier will liaise with third-party providers, such as the phone or printer maintenance company, to resolve issues with their respective technologies.

If a client machine breaks and cannot be resolved remotely, it will be replaced by either a thin client or a laptop, depending on requirements. It may be the case that a small stock of thin client machines are kept (either at Metro or supplier’s premises) in order to transition into quickly, or, due to the provisioning through TS, the affected user could hot-desk and reconnect to their session with no data loss until the hardware issue is resolved.

LOBS (Line of Business Software)
The aim and primary deliverable of the LOBS project is to recommend the future platform for Metro’s line of business software. To reach these objectives, analysis and investigation of Metro’s business needs, along with those of Metro’s customers, needs to take place. The former of these two has been documented and the latter is due to start shortly.

The next phase is to select a platform that meets the needs of the business and Metro’s customers. Preliminary discussions have happened with SAP and a handful of other vendors, although no decision has been made to choose their respective platform.

The preferred approach, which has been approved by the Board, to provision functionality through line of business software is ERP (enterprise resource planning), since this provides a unified system for all users to interact with and reduces the need for integration with other software packages. However this standpoint is still being challenged as the impact of ERP can be huge on a business, and furthermore we haven’t come across a solution that accommodates Metro’s complex business processes without customisation.

Since we haven’t selected a platform, it’s impossible to determine how it will be delivered; either through a web interface, or client-server applications. There’s a huge variety of platforms to choose from, and their method of delivery is split into these two camps. If we need to revisit integrated best of breed applications, rather than ERP, then the task of choosing the correct suite of line of business software becomes more lengthy and complex.