AGFA

The true image of consolidation

T-Systems provides SAP application infrastructure outsourcing, single point of contact service desk and unifies 2 complex data center environments, within 4 months, helping Agfa achieve consistency across technology platforms, streamline support operations and simplify desktop management.

The customer

With over 22,000 employees, Agfa-Gevaert Group is one of the world's largest imaging companies. Well known as a manufacturer of consumer products such as photographic film, Agfa is also a major producer of hardware, software and digital imaging products for prepress systems, healthcare imaging, industrial imaging and non-destructive testing.

Corporate headquarters are located in Mortsel, Belgium with large manufacturing plants in Belgium, Germany and the United States. The company has sales organizations in 40 countries with 120 agents throughout the world. Regional sales in Europe and North America represented over 75% of Agfa's $4.41 billion turnover in 2000.

The challenge

In 2001, when Bayer announced the sale of its remaining stake in Agfa, its Pittsburgh, PA data center controlled Agfa's SAP production environment. A separate data center in Charlotte, NC controlled production for Agfa's North Carolina plant. Motivated by the separation from its parent and dissatisfied with its secondary provider's service, Agfa was driven to switch providers within the year. Agfa needed comprehensive open systems support and desktop services from a single source that could consolidate data centers, streamline support operations and simplify desktop management. Agfa planned to test a provider's performance before outsourcing IT and network services beyond the boundaries of its domestic operations, so it needed a stable partner who could support global operations well into the future. Within 1.5 months, an international team at T-Systems designed and proposed a solution, and was awarded the contract with Agfa's U.S. subsidiary. Agfa identified T-Systems as a long-term partner that could lower costs, improve the consistency of delivery and reduce production expenses through enhanced technology and management.

The T-Systems solution

To consolidate the hardware platforms, T-Systems created a new environment at its suburban Chicago facility. It replaced Agfa's older equipment with 25 servers running on a common HP platform. T-Systems outfitted the data center with high-end storage technology and installed MC Service Guard for redundancy.

It tested mirror images of Agfa's applications and data before transitioning the production environments to its data center in two phases. The first data center migration was completed in 60 days, from set-up to a Labor Day weekend migration. T-Systems immediately prepared for the larger, more complicated Pittsburgh data center migration, which supported a 700-gigabyte database. The simulations, taking one week each to complete, began in October and revealed an unexpected need to upgrade to v.8 of Oracle. Despite the additional requirements, T-Systems executed all the required testing and completed the transition by the Thanksgiving weekend deadline.

T-Systems supports 3,200 users in Agfa's U.S. operations with extensive desktop service and support, including call center support for hardware, applications and connectivity issues. T-Systems stationed on-site technicians at key Agfa facilities and serves remote locations with dispatched technicians.

Customer benefits

T-Systems provides a single point of contact for full life cycle asset management, service desk, IMAC, break/fix maintenance and software support. Mission critical data is continuously monitored under T-Systems' management of the open systems environment and first call closure improved by 42%, increasing Agfa's production efficiency by getting users up and running faster. T-Systems reduced the business impact of the transitions by completing the migrations over holiday weekends. With T-Systems' solution, Agfa achieved consistency with a single technology in operating systems. After the migrations, Agfa's processing time improved by 33%. T-Systems' delivery model eliminated the need for an internal desktop services division and each member of the existing Agfa IT support team was offered a position with T-Systems. T-Systems' complete solution helped Agfa realize cost savings of 17% to its IT operations spending so far, and its global delivery capabilities ensure a partnership with Agfa that can grow well into the future.

"The more closely and openly we worked with T-Systems the more our interests were served, " said Brian Jeannotte, Director of Global Information and Communication Services, NAFTA. "The result is an optimized plan that provides measurable cost savings, improved our return on investment and one that delivers on Agfa's strategic objectives."