Citrix simplifies information access at Alstom

This is a company that was affected by mergers, demergers and more mergers before it finally reached a state of consolidation and became more focused. Still, the business interests of Alstom were so diverse that putting them on one IT network was a difficult task. Gaurav Patra finds out how they did it

The challenge for Alstom was to optimally manage bandwidth and keep capital as well as operational costs well under control, says C R Narayanan

Commencing operations in Kolkata (then Calcutta) during the 1910s, Alstom has emerged as one of the leading companies in India in areas such as energy and transport infrastructure, electrical and industrial equipment (including boilers and turbines), pollution control equipment for power plants, and transmission and distribution equipment. With its significant presence in the transport sector in the country, it also provides railway equipment and technology solutions. Alstom in India has two listed companies in Kolkata and Mumbai, with a total strength of 6,000 employees, 12 manufacturing facilities, and offices at over 30 locations.

IT at Alstom

C R Narayanan, the company’s IT manager, informs that Alstom will be going in for almost all the connectivity options available in the market for their new IT infrastructure—leased lines, VSATs and radio links. The company, in the new scheme of things, will be deploying about 11 leased lines ranging from 64 to 256 Kbps in terms of capacity. As far as VSATs are concerned, they will be opting for one TDMA VSAT and four SCPC DAMA VSATs. Radio links will be part of the local area network (LAN); these links will be connected up to the point of presence (PoP). An intranet, SAP 4.6C, Mail and WorkFlow on Lotus Notes and Lotus SameTime Collaborative applications will run on the proposed networks.

Alstom has a wide network of information systems with a WAN spanning up to Singapore, Atlanta and Paris. The India office is connected to Singapore for further access to Alstom’s worldwide locations. Among the main applications used is SAP ERP. Lotus Notes is being used for information reposition, workflow management and message exchange. Web-based HR, the document management system, the centrally-managed IS codes system, and computer-aided design and Office applications are among the other automated areas.

Applications like EDS and Oracle will also be an integral part of the proposed network. Barring a few, the company has got rid of most legacy applications. But as Narayanan reveals, it is still using some applications like HR because they have not put the HR module on SAP. “The reason for this is that when you take a SAP licence you need to give database access to every employee. Apart from this, SAP licensing is also very costly. That’s why we are still using some legacy applications,” he explains. Alstom has outsourced the management of the network to a third-party service provider. Right now that provider is AT&T, but for the post-separation environment Alstom will be looking at a separate service provider to outsource its network management facility.

On the LAN front the company has deployed routers from Cisco, ranging from Cisco product families 1600 to 2400. As of now the company runs on a mesh network, but Narayanan says the new network will have a star topology. As far as servers are concerned, the company deploys a mix of HP, IBM and Dell servers. The company also has an SGI server, which it is now migrating to the Wintel platform for uniformity of platforms across all the locations.

Money matters

With its business interests being very diverse, Alstom realised the importance of technology applications for its entire enterprise operation. “Technology has really became the backbone for all our business activities,” declares Narayanan.

Nevertheless, economics was always a concern; the IT department was expected to use the existing IT infrastructure efficiently, and make do with the limited budget available at its disposal. As a result, during 2000, Alstom decided to further streamline its IT operations with a focus on cost-cutting, real-time information access, faster application deployment and centralised data administration. “The challenge was to optimally manage bandwidth and keep capital as well as operational costs well under control,” says Narayanan. The result was an intelligent Citrix implementation.

Why Citrix?

Narayanan has a very valid reason when asked why only Citrix could solve his problem. “Nowadays bandwidth prices are drastically coming down, but some time back it was a very costly commodity. As far as making use of central applications was concerned, one had to use more bandwidth and as a result the cost was always very high. Thus, for cost efficiency we had no choice but to use Citrix.”

Alstom deployed Citrix MetaFrame XP Presentation Server in 2000. Today, using one Citrix server with a 40-user licence, Alstom has nearly 1,000 client machines in its network. To top it all, since Alstom worldwide is probably one of the largest users of Citrix, Alstom India bought it directly from the company without a reseller coming into the picture.

Benefits

As business volumes grow at a fast pace and the network grows both in terms of people and geographies, Alstom has gained substantial advantages by deploying Citrix for its various needs. The web-based HR module, for example, has become extremely easy to operate with the help of Citrix Nfuse, which has also resulted in cost savings for various Intranet applications that the company has. Since IS code updation is now centralised, all end-users always get uniform, latest information across the company. “When you are accessing an application through Citrix you are only getting the picture—you are not downloading everything that is happening at the LAN, you are not putting any extra pressure on the LAN, which explains why we are experiencing great speeds across locations,” says Narayanan. He says that with Citrix, at any point of time they are only using 4-5 Kbps.

Citrix ICA enables it to quickly deploy applications while adding more clients in the network. Alstom is also getting huge investment protection since Citrix allows it to use even older machines while delivering high network performance. Thus, maintenance costs come down drastically. Similarly, the company has saved a lot on manpower expenses since it is operating with only a few people, in order to get better services from its IT systems. The focus is more on integrating IT with its core business activity.

Today, every user across the country is getting the latest versions of IT standards, which was made possible only by implementing Citrix MetaFrame. All locations in the country are now accessing different applications through Citrix, and they have just two user licences. “A person who requires to access different applications needs to access them just for three to four minutes. That is why we opted for just two user licences to keep the licence fee low and to optimally rotate and use the licensed versions when they are not in use,” says Narayanan.

Another major benefit that the company is getting out of the Citrix implementation is that they are now able to make use of older and obsolete machines. For example, almost every month people come for some temporary work to the head office. Providing them new machines is not a cost-effective idea. “We have some old machines, and we have made available all the applications on those machines through Citrix. Otherwise we would have scrapped these machines,” explains Narayanan. The firm is now making use of these machines for at least 30 man-months every year.

Future course

Of late the company has been trying to extend Citrix usage to its other locations on the LANs. “I am thinking on those lines. Why should I have machines at all? Rather, we should have a Citrix server farm,” muses Narayanan. At present Alstom only has one Citrix server, but as more users hook on to the network the company will have more servers and machines. Narayanan says that if they have a Citrix server farm it will reduce support cost drastically. “In case we do not have a Citrix server farm, then we have to provide support every each single node on the network. But a Citrix server farm usually supports 1,200 nodes,” Narayanan observes. He adds that during upgradations they need to load the latest version of the software on each terminal, but in the case of Citrix it can be upgraded centrally without touching all the machines. “Though the Citrix network licence is not very cheap, the cost is justified if you consider its overall support and benefits,” Narayanan concludes.

gaurav@expresscomputeronline.com