Alere International
We get results:
Project Unity brings together over 100 offices and disparate IT infrastructures into a single, global setup.
About Alere:
Alere, a Global Medical Diagnostics company, is committed to delivering high-quality products and services that patients and providers can rely on for consistently accurate and actionable information. They deploy unique innovative technologies that not only transform diagnostic products, but also expand into new platforms and solutions with proven global health and economic outcomes.
The Project
Project Unity brings together over 100 offices and disparate IT infrastructures into a single, global setup. This enterprise project rolled up major infrastructure changes including new AD, Office 365 migration, Windows XP to Windows 7 and new hardware rollout.
Challenges
The project challenges were massive, 78 AD Domains to consolidate into one, no global estate audit, multiple enterprise management toolsets, medical hardware dependencies on Windows XP, complex diagnostic software and sensitive patient data. The enterprise, due to the nature of its growth, consisted of many SME's with their own IT infrastructure, management teams and support services, with the goal for the Global Transformation being one entity with optimised business and IT processes.
- Bring together over 100 remote offices
- Bring entire estate under one single infrastructure
- Consolidate +800,000 software installations
Immovable Hurdles
- Unknown applications out there
- Many Hardware and In House apps that only compatible with XP
- No idea of global application spread
The Solution - Mobilisation
- Global Application Audit - Gathered every users location and installed applications
- Rationalised estate to 500 applications
- Discovered all applications
- Packaged apps with 98% first time right
- Testing streams
The Solution - Delivery
Application Audit was complex but given the complexity we needed a single version of the truth. Multiple data sources were leveraged, as well as multiple CMDB's and stakeholders interview outputs. APPtechnology designed the software rationalisation processes covering usage, compatibility and consolidation to deliver a leaner application estate, giving a single master CMDB incorporating Application and User profiles.
The CMDB was extended to include forward pathing for ongoing consolidation, allowing business unit exceptions where necessary, and included User Migration Readiness reporting, allowing "what if" scenarios to be used to prioritise application workloads. 800,000 individual software installs were reduced to a managed estate of 500 applications, delivered via SCCM.
APPtechnology Discovery Consultants undertook media location, licensing investigation and documentation of all configuration requirements, with Application Packaging using onsite resources and offsite workstreams, directed by our Service Delivery Management Team. The result was enterprise standard documentation for every application under management in the estate. The pressure of testing workloads on the business was reduced by the use of our Independent Functionality testing services on commercial applications, giving a real world approach to risk versus business impact, with our Test Management scheduling and hosting UAT where necessary for Line of Business applications.
Implementing SCCM across the estate was technically complicated due to network and general connectivity issues, however APPtechnology leveraged ACP technology to mitigate bandwidth issues, giving OSD anywhere and user data migration DR to any office. User migrations were linked directly to AD consolidation, so Exchange, Office 365, SID history and other cloud and identity related components such as adobe CC all had to be precisely aligned as rollback was extremely complicated. With APPtechnology's Project Management and technical services this complexity was managed, and automated where possible.
Project Legacy
- Reduced software licencing measured in £100's/thousands
- All applications now catalogued bringing lower downstream costs
- Fixed pricing for applications allowed for accurate budgeting
- Consolidated 78 domains into just 1
- Enterprise standard documentation for every application