Case Study Timeline

Shell Research

our first large contract

Storage service re-engineering

The Business Problem

Shell Research was using the Andrew File System (AFS) to store large amounts of data securely. However the product was very complicated and local staff were having trouble supporting it, resulting in instability and poor user satisfaction. Shell decided to outsource support and Competa won the tender, beating much larger companies such as IBM and Digital (now part of HP) due to our technical know-how.

Central to the contract to run the service was a `scorecard' or service level agreement which included bonus payments or penalties for exceeding or missing well defined targets in the provision of the service.

The Competa Approach

A team of 4 specialists was assigned to the project, with skills in different areas including systems, software development, training and service management. Our first task in taking over the service was to set up a second-line help desk so that users always had access to in-depth technical support. All systems (more than six hundred) were audited, and all software was brought up to date and configured correctly. User surveys were conducted to identify specific problem areas. The surveys revealed user education to be a factor, so key users were trained on a one-to one basis.

Capacity planning issues were also identified, so we presented a business case that demonstrated how maintenance costs could be reduced if the server environment were rationalised by migrating to a smaller number of larger servers with a newer technology. We also showed how the redundant hardware could be used elsewhere within the organisation. The customer agreed with our proposal, so servers were upgraded and the service moved to the new environment.

Competa also wrote software tools to make the administration of the systems easier and more reliable. We even managed to fix a few other problems in the Shell infrastructure not related to the AFS service.

The Result

By properly engineering the service and training Shell staff, within a year reliability improved dramatically and user satisfaction with the service was restored.

Through careful engineering we were able to upgrade the service with only one compulsory outage in an 18 month period. We were benchmarked seven times against the service level agreement, and on all occasions were awarded a bonus. On two occasions we achieved full marks. The head of the IT group was so pleased that he wrote a reference for us.

After 18 months the service was so stable and easy to run that it was in-sourced again and run by just one junior full-time employee.

Norske Shell

saving money unexpectedly

Selection of fileserver vendor

The Business Problem

Norske Shell had problems with poor fileserver performance and had asked a number vendors to provide quotes for replacing the existing server. The management was having difficulties comparing the bids and deciding which option to choose. We were asked to help.

How We Helped

Before looking at the vendors bids we audited the infrastructure to ensure that the problem really was with the server. Our findings were interesting. Whilst the server was indeed overloaded, performing badly and in need of replacement, a large part of the problem was that desktop machines were short of memory which was causing application performance problems.

Performance as perceived by end-users could be improved dramatically simply by increasing the memory in desktop machines.

The Result

As a result of these findings the company replaced the fileserver with a machine much smaller and cheaper than expected, and in doing so saved a considerable amount of money.

They were delighted with the final performance of the overall system, which was significantly cheaper than expected.

WFA

using the right tool for the job

Windows to Linux migration

The Business Problem

WFA provide a wireless photography service which allows photographers in the field to upload pictures into a database. The database is accessible by newspapers and magazines throughout the Netherlands and the rest of the world.

Whilst the company is small their IT infrastructure was complicated, with many different network connections and a mixture of operating systems technologies including Microsoft, Unix and Linux. The company relies entirely on IT for it's operation, but had no full-time IT staff.

Instability in the database server was causing serious problems for the company, a more robust and better performing media database system was urgently needed.

How Competa Helped

Working together with another company who specialise in image storage and retrieval technologies, we initiated a project to migrate their databases to a new and more sophisticated system running under Linux.

The new system included a second mirror system to provide automatic on-line back-up of the master system and automatic fall-over in the event of a failure.

The Result

Stability improved through appropriate server technology. The new system outperformed commercial media database systems costing many times more. In a demonstration a representative from Reuters, one of the worlds largest media information companies, was 'speechless' at the performance and functionality.

The customer very pleased and sent us a letter of thanks.

The new database system is still running today, 12 years later, although on different hardware!

Lucent Technologies

less is more

Fileserver build, migration and consolidation

The Requirements

Lucent had ordered two large fileservers from Sun Microsystems, to replace a number of older machines which were unreliable and giving performance problems. The new servers needed to be installed in two locations in the Netherlands. Each installation required careful planning as currently multiple versions of the same data were stored on different machines.

Sun subcontracted the installation and migration work to Competa due to the reputation we had built as a result of the success of the Shell Research Storage project.

How We Helped

Following similar principles to those used in our previous project with Shell, we audited all of the old machines, and working closely with users identified which versions of data were needed and what could be deleted. A lot of work went into ensuring that the change of server names would not cause problems for users.

The new servers were then built and static data copied across to provide a test load for performance and reliability testing. Careful and extensive testing revealed that performance issues existed, not on the servers, but instead due to limitations in the network infrastructure. Relatively minor changes were made to the network to ensure that all systems performed as expected. For each old machine a date was set for shutdown and software was written to automate copying data through the night. Finally, one by one, the old servers were shut down and the new systems took over.

The Result

Costs were reduced as a result of lower power and maintenance costs for a smaller number of machines.

User productivity increased as a result of having all data in the same place, and a more stable environment.

Petro-Canada

keeping the machinery oiled

Auditing, re-configuration, remote support and training

The Business Problem

Veba Oil was a small oil company with exploration interests in the North Sea. The company was later bought by Petro-Canada. The office in The Hague used a number of Unix workstations and experienced problems with support and maintenance as local IT staff were unfamiliar with Unix systems. End users were complaining about poorly configured, inconsistent and unstable machines.

How We Helped

First, on a project basis, an engineer from Competa audited the entire Unix environment and catalogued the problems. The machines were brought to a consistent level of operating system and patches, and as far as possible administration was automated. A consistent directory structure for users was created and integration with the Microsoft network was improved.

Once a stable environment was achieved, we discussed on-going support requirements with users and management and made a plan for the future.

We developed a Service Level Agreement for "On-Demand" services tailored to customer requirements. This included a remote monitoring service to ensure basic functions such as backups were running properly. Local IT staff were trained to perform basic administration procedures and a remote third-line support service was organised so that problems and requests could be escalated. We set up the ability to remotely diagnose and repair problems and an on-site rota was put in place for face-to-face meetings with users every two weeks.

The Result

Through a mixture of services including consultancy, on-demand and training, both systems design and support processes improved. The systems became stable, functional and required almost no routine maintenance. As a result engineers at Veba Oil received the same level of support as engineers at multi-national oil companies allowing them to be more productive in their work.

Following the merge with Petro-Canada, Competa worked with the customer to ensure smooth transition of services to the main Petro-Canada datacenter in London.

Sun Microsystems

helping our partners

Performance analysis

The Requirements

Sun Microsystems had a customer in the oil industry with a large and complicated seismic processing site. The customer was experiencing intermittent problems with a fileserver and it was thought that there was a bug, configuration problem or lack of resource on the server.

The customer was unable to resolve the problem themselves, and so asked Sun for help. Sun in turn asked us.

Our Technical Analysis

We executed a detailed performance analysis not only of the NFS server itself but also all of clients connected to it. The network infrastructure at the site was very complicated, with clients connecting across 10MB and 100MB Ethernet, FDDI and ATM on 14 different subnets. The site also demanded high availability, so it was not possible to put a test load on the NFS server - we had to run monitoring software and then patiently wait for the problem to occur so that we could try to catch relevant information. The intermittent nature of the problem and the switched architecture of ATM made this rather difficult.

After a period of monitoring and auditing all machines on the network we identified the main problem as being due to icmp redirects causing broadcast storms. We also identified a number of areas in which performance could be further improved, including:

• tuning NFS parameters
• changes to mount maps to further utilise ATM
• unwanted multicasts and broadcasts present on the network
• incomplete NIS tables
• missing OS patches including those for Y2K compliance
• improvements to the site routing

The Result

We fixed not only the fileserver problems, but also problems related to the entire network. The end customer was very happy that everything worked, and Sun Microsystems were happy that the problem was shown to be not related to Sun equipment.

Confidential

profit from technology

Moving from floor trading to electronic trading

The Business Problem

A small but rapidly growing and highly profitable financial company were becoming dependent on IT. The directors of the company realised that complex computational systems would be critical to the continued success and future of their business. However they had no real IT department or organisation, and whilst the directors of the company recognised the value of IT they did not understand the IT market or the technologies themselves.

In particular there was an urgent requirement to move to screen-based electronic trading due to the closure of floor trading at the AEX.

How We Helped

Competa worked closely with the directors and key staff members to identify the business requirements both present and future. We then designed an appropriate IT department organogram for the company, with separate systems support and software development groups, internal account managers and a CIO.

Competa staff were placed in key roles on an interim basis, whilst assisting with recruitment to help the customer build their own team. As time went by Competa staff were replaced when suitable permanent candidates were found.

Whilst doing this we also solved specific issues within the infrastructure that were causing "pain", for example the inability of traders to transfer data from one trading platform to another. In this way we managed to achieve a number of easy "wins", which gave the traders confidence in the IT group as well as making the company more profitable.

The Result

The company successfully migrated to electronic trading. They are now one of the worlds most successful trading companies, and employ more IT staff than traders.

Confidential

find the right equipment

Independent advice for vendor selection

The Business Problem

A European mobile telephone operator was running customer billing software on a Sun based Oracle environment with several Terabytes of data. They needed to build a new replicated remote site for redundancy and fallback, but were not sure of which technologies to use.

How We Helped

Competa analysed their business requirements and existing site infrastructure and helped to select a list of vendors to be invited to bid to build a very large SAN. Competa also assisted with the review of the bids and selection of the final vendor.

Our independent status allowed us to review bids objectively and select a solution suited to the requirements.

The Result

A cost effective solution was purchased which integrated into the existing environment and worked as expected right from the start.

Exactly what the customer wanted.

Confidential

no Microsoft allowed

GEC Linux: enabling business in embargoed countries

The Business Problem

Geopolitical turmoil has resulted in a number of countries being listed as "Globally Embargoed Countries". This is a US ruling that outlaws the export of most US developed technologies to these countries. This includes common IT products from companies such as Microsoft.

In practice local companies blatantly flaunt the law and use illegal copies of US software at will, but multi-nationals run the risk of severe legal action in the US if they deploy common IT products. A multi-national oil company was faced with this dilemma when opening new offices in two GEC Countries - breaking GEC rules was not an option.

The company had to either run an antiquated IT infrastructure, or see if a complete, modern, enterprise IT infrastructure could be built using entirely Open Source products.

How Competa Helped

The project was conducted in four distinct phases:

• feasibility study and pilot
• test implementation on "brown-filed" site
• full production build and deployment on "green-field" site
• on-going maintenance

The first two phases were conducted off-site in the Competa office, the third and fourth stages as a partnership with the customer, working on-site and according to the customer's stringent internal project management system. The whole project took five years from beginning to end.

The project was extremely complicated. A great many products had to be tested and evaluated both for suitability and also compatibility. A lot of work went into ensuring the user experience would be a good one. This required a lot of work on the user interface and also engineering effort to make sure systems would be highly stable and capable of remote maintenance if required, as engineering support in GEC countries was limited at first. The eventual solution was based around GEC compliant laptops, building as much of the infrastructure requirements as possible into the laptop to reduce dependence on infrastructure in the GEC country.

The Result

The customer considered the project to be hugely successful - it enabled business people to work without Microsoft products. The GEC Linux project was also very cost effective - much cheaper than a comparable project for a global standard Windows 2000 configuration.

The project demonstrated how business requirements which are impossible to meet with commercially available, proprietary products, can be very successfully met using Open Source products. Apparently intractable business problems can be solved, giving a clear return on investment and business advantage over competitors.

Staatsolie

jungle computing

Dutch language systems installation and support

The Business Problem

The Suriname state oil company, Staatsolie, needed a new facility for interpretation of seismic data. They had decided on using hardware mainly from Sun Microsystems, however the nearest Sun offices to Suriname are in Venezuela or the States which means communicating in Spanish or English. Staatsolie wanted all communication to be conducted in the local language, Dutch. Sun Nederland were unable to help with work in Suriname, so Staatsolie subcontracted the work to Competa.

How We Helped

Representatives from Staatsolie came to visit Competa so that we could scope the project in detail. Competa then sourced all of the hardware from a local distributor, and arranged for shipping to Suriname. Once the hardware was on-site we flew an engineer over to complete the installation and migration, which took one month.

Many problems were found in the local infrastructure, but we managed to successfully fix everything and deliver the system on-time. We arranged a hardware support contract via the distributor, and facilities for on-going systems support if needed.

The Result

The customer was able to deliver the project successfully, without any language barriers.

KNMI

keeping everybody happy

Storage review - how to meet apparently conflicting needs

The Business Problem

A research lab was finding it difficult to manage increasingly large amounts of data. Some data was held in more than one location, or on desktop machines, wasting disk space and making it difficult to ensure that everything was adequately backed up. Users had apparently conflicting needs for data storage.

Storage vendors had made suggestions for a suitable architecture, but there were concerns that recommendations were biased in favour of product sales.

The customer wanted an independent survey to asses the extent of the problem and propose some architectural solutions as input for a long term Storage Review. Eventually this would lead to preparation of a Request for Tender for vendors.

How We Helped

A team of storage specialists interviewed all parties, including management, systems support staff, developers and end users. A complex set of requirements was drawn up detailing all aspects of required functionality. From these requirements it was possible to design a number of innovative solutions which would meet the needs of all parties.

A detailed report was made showing the findings of the review, and a selection of architectures with advice regarding which would be possible long-term solutions. A presentation was also made to all interested parties to discuss the findings of the report.

The Result

The customer was surprised at how simple the solution could be and how it comprehensively met the needs of all parties. A manager described the findings as "an earthquake in thinking".

The recommendations of the review were eventually implemented.

TNO

start from the middle and work outwards

Network and storage architecture: complex migration

The Business Problem

A software development company spun-off from TNO needed to migrate away from TNO services and rapidly build their own sophisticated IT infrastructure. As a software development company their IT needs were complex, but they had no expertise of systems storage and networks.

How We Helped

Competa designed a phased plan to build core infrastructure components, replacing functionality provided by TNO piece by piece. The requirements for a commercial company are rather different than those of a government organisation, so each component was examined on the basis of a business case rather than simply cloning the existing infrastructure.

We started by building core functions such as storage and backup, and then worked outwards until most of the network had been built. Interoperability between new and old networks was maintained at all times. Competa systems staff filled key roles in the organisation until permanent replacements could be found.

The Result

Migration was successful and large parts of the infrastructure are still operational today.

Confidential

getting results quickly

Laboratory automation and medical data integration

The Business Problem

A mid-size medical laboratory performed over 150,000 complex tests and diagnoses per year for a large group of general practitioners. Their customers (and patients) valued quick turn-around of results in the analysis of serious medical conditions.

Two factors were key to the continued success of the company:

• improving quality of service to ensure repeat business
• better efficiency through optimising equipment utilisation

How We Helped

The tests ran on many different pieces of equipment, and produced results stored in many different formats which needed to be subsequently analyzed. The company had a further requirement for flexible and secure patient record keeping systems and communications with external parties. The wide variety of proprietary technologies and different formats used caused major data management problems which in turn caused unacceptable risk of error and cost.

Competa implemented a track-and-trace system based on Open Source components and integrated this system with the existing lab equipment and the laboratory management system. Image processing devices, archiving systems and chemical analysis devices were connected using DICOM and proprietary protocols, partly based on RFID or multi-dimensional barcodes. Systems were reconfigured, software interfaces were written and new systems were installed and implemented. Interconnects to External systems and customers were standardized on HL7 and highly secure webservices.

In the new system analysis, diagnosis and results are entirely processed in an end-to-end IT system, ensuring traceability.

The Result

Diagnosis turn-around time has been significantly reduced. Customers and patients now receive their results quickly and accurately and Management have clear information regarding all aspects of the process.

These improvements, through application of IT and integration of various systems, ensure strong demand for the laboratory's services.

Ilse Media

millions rest assured with REST

Modern web interfaces with proven technology

The Business Problem

Our customer, a very large Media company, owned a lot of different websites each with its own login system. The customer wanted to improve ease of use by moving to a single sign-on system.

Technical Details

To provide single sign-on, a web service handling authentication and user profiles needed to be designed and built. Representational State Transfer, or REST for short, is an architectural style for distributed applications. Compared with other styles of web services like SOAP and RPC, REST is easy to implement and has many highly desirable architectural properties like scalability, performance, security, reliability and extensibility. REST was chosen since it is very scalable, relies on proven technologies, and is not dependent on external libraries.

Since the system had potentially millions of users, security was a very important factor in the design. Normal HTTP authentication was not enough, so for authentication Amazons' extremely secure S3 REST API custom HTTP scheme was selected which is based on a keyed-HMAC (Hash Message Authentication Code). Where HMAC could not be used, Blowfish encryption was used to secure the data.

A REST interface can be implemented in all languages, but since the customers' in-house expertise is primarily in PHP, this was the natural choice. The MVC (Model View Controller) architectural pattern fits the REST architectural style perfectly, so Codeigniter, an MVC framework for PHP, was chosen to develop the webservice in. By using the Codeigniter framework, development time was cut in half since a lot of technologies needed for the web service already exist in the framework.

The Result

Quickly, effectively and securely the customer implemented single sign-on, thereby improving ease of use for millions of users across a very large number of websites.

TomTom

how we helped TomTom to find their way

Building a web based "Track and Trace" system

The Business Problem

The customer support department located in the Netherlands is responsible for after sales care. This call center handles customer claims for Tom Tom GPS devices worldwide and is responsible for processing and tracking all repairs and services (RMA, Return Merchandise Authorisation).

Due to a rapidly growing customer base, the customer support department lacked an adequate system with which to track the status of devices returned by consumers for repair.

Our Technical Solution

A team of software engineers from Competa designed, developed and implemented a software program to track consumer information and the status of repair for defective devices, including integration with transport and logistic company systems to track return of devices.

The system was built using PHP 5 and a number of different, partly customer specific, Model View Controller frameworks. The complete system took about four months to design and develop using Agile development techniques such as Scrum. Prior to deployment a rigorous testing procedure was performed, comprising of regression testing and user and useability tests.

The Result

TomTom now has a system that can easily track the RMA process from end to end, something that was previously not possible. This has resulted in a dramatic increase in business efficiency, combined with more direct control over business processes through management reporting capabilities.

Rabobank

less is more

Design and build server virtualization infrastructure

The problem

Rabobank network management applications were running on a large number of machines under Solaris 8 for which support was ending. Both the hardware and the operating system were outdated, and therefore expensive to maintain and support.

There was a strong business case to reduce operational costs by upgrading and modernising the Solaris environment, including the network management applications. Additionally, this was an opportunity to improve stability and reduce risk through revision of server maintenance procedures.

How Competa Helped

With our extensive knowledge of Solaris, Competa redesigned the whole environment based on latest technology. Keeping a keen eye on manageability, security and fitness for the future resulted in a new environment based on Solaris 10 with the extensive use of new Solaris 10 features and SAN storage.

Solaris 10 features such as RBAC, BSM, SMF, ZFS and Projects have been put to full use to improve security, manageability and availability. Additionally, several platform services, such as LDAP and secure authentication, were upgraded and enhanced to further improve security and manageability.

Tools were put in place to reduce the time needed for maintenance and to minimise the risk of user error. All installations were standardized and automated with a complete new Jumpstart environment, which can also deploy Solaris Containers. Commissioning of the new systems included phasing out legacy systems and applications following successful migration.

Naturally, we fully documented the environment - all administration procedures have been revised and augmented and the System and Application Administrators have been educated.

The Result

Our customer now has a complete new and up to date environment in which the amount of production servers to maintain has dropped from more than 40 to only 6 - including a functional development, test and acceptation environment.

Creation or recovery of a security-hardened and fully configured Solaris environment now takes less then 20 minutes! Additionally, changes in the environment can now be made quickly and in a controlled manner.

ING Real Estate

when you know what you want

Rapid, quality coding

The Requirements

ING Real Estate had designed two systems in partnership with Microsoft. Both were internal applications to be used by ING Real Estate internationally. The first was a system to track the profitability of their large commercial property portfolios. The second a Human Resources application to record the results of staff reviews and calculate annual staff bonuses across the entire organisation.

The requirements analysis and design had already been done to a very high standard. All that remained was to write the code as quickly as possible without compromising quality. Quality of code was essential as the financial nature of the applications meant that security was vitally important.

How We Helped

Competa supplied a senior developer who took the excellent design specifications and worked extra hard to implement the software both quickly and efficiently. It was essential that the applications would require the minimum of bug fixing and be up and running as quickly as possible.

Both projects were built to strict standards and according to Microsoft best practices. Technologies used included C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server and Microsoft Enterprise Libraries.

The Result

The first application was finished on time and immediately passed all testing. The second application was finished way under deadline, more than a month earlier than expected.

Sometimes there are no questions to ask or problems to solve, you just have to work really hard for a few months!

Ziggo

teamwork produces results

Architecture for a new customer portal

The Business Problem

Following the merger of three TV cable and Internet providers, it was necessary to support the customer base with up to date information on the services provided by the new company.

Customer satisfaction greatly depends on the ease of access to information through the company website, so a new customer portal needed to be developed and launched. This required a complete redesign of the IT infrastructure.

How We Helped

Competa system engineers and a Competa project manager worked in a team with a content management expert to ensure a seamless connection between the content, software and hardware components for the high performance portal.

Competa re-designed the hardware infrastructure making use of the existing infrastructure where possible. A new Sun Microsystems based environment was built as a platform for the portal.

Competa led the evaluation and selection of the Content Management system and custom portal development, designed to handle hundreds of thousands of customers.

The Result

The new portal was launched on-target and performed exactly according to specifications.

Improved "customer experience" strengthens the new Ziggo brand.

ICTU

getting faster

Web portal performance analysis and resolution

The Problem

ICTU is a Dutch Government organization which builds and maintains IT systems for other government departments. ICTU operates a web portal to facilitate communication between local government and the public. This highly visible web application suffered from major performance problems, resulting in severe performance degradation with more than a few users, and frequent server crashes.

Competa was asked to assist in identifying the cause of the performance problems, and to design and build whatever would be required to ensure that the website performs well in the future. Part of our brief was to improve performance through tuning and configuration, without any major expenditure in new equipment.

How Competa Helped

With a partner that specializes in performance testing and tools we showed the customer the extent of the problem and the causes. Then, working with the customer's systems engineers and developers, major changes in the systems and software architecture were proposed including re-designing the server infrastructure and re-writing the next version of the portal software using a different software framework.

Following approval and testing these changes were successfully implemented, to the satisfaction of the customer.

The Result

Performance increased dramatically as a result of changes made on our recommendation. This led to a 5-10 fold increase in the number of concurrent users that could be served, without any investment in hardware.

Schuberg Philis

helping the best to get better

Bringing in world experts to deliver tailored training solutions

The Requirements

Schuberg Philis is a leading provider of mission critical outsourcing services. They focus exclusively on the applications that businesses rely on 24 hours per day, guaranteeing 100% uptime. Staff needed to get up to speed on two technologies used in the datacenter, Cfengine and Perl. External training courses were rejected as it was not possible for all staff to attend. It was decided that on-site training, specific to the work being performed, would be more efficient and cost-effective.

Our Workshops

Through our extensive partner network including contacts in organisations such as USENIX, Competa was able to bring the world's leading experts in CFEngine and Perl on-site to Schuberg Philis.

Workshops were given in the form and depth that staff wanted, and real examples from the work-place were discussed.

The Result

Schuberg Philis staff themselves are now experts in these technologies, helping to deliver the 100% uptime that their customers rely upon.

CBS Flex-ible Web

keeping the map up to date

Migration to the latest web technologies

The Requirements

The Central Bureau of Statistics maintains a public website displaying statistical data relevant to the Netherlands. Parts of the website allow the selection and graphical display of statistics with a geographical dimension.

Display of graphical data can be difficult because of inconsistent browser support. CBS were using a popular Adobe plugin module to improve browser compatibility, but Adobe had dropped support for the module. Consequently CBS needed the map interface updating and replacing with the latest technologies.

How We Helped

A senior developer worked with the customer to help define requirements and make working specifications. Flex modules were then built and integrated into an ASP.NET back end.

Technologies used included Actionscript 3, Adobe Flex 3, C#, ASP.NET, SOAP and XML.

The Result

The website is now successfully updated and more compatible with latest standards. Business continuity is assured.

Sanoma Digital

dealing with volume, fast

Developing software for high traffic websites

The Business Problem

Sanoma delivers rich media via the internet. This involves dealing with extremely high traffic to websites - including the most requested website in the Netherlands. Managing this kind of traffic requires developing leading-edge content delivery systems to ensure that all data is instantly available to all customers.

Sanoma asked Competa to help in the design of such a system.

How We Helped

A Competa Senior Software Architect is the Lead Architect and Project Lead of a REST (Representational State Transfer) webservice that provides and manages all media content. This includes building interfaces for 3rd party companies and the development of an interface to manipulate media for each website. Technologies used include Python and Django.

The software being developed will be used by websites such as the Dutch "YouTube" (Zie.nl).

The Result

With these new systems Sanoma can serve their customers by providing optimum response times and a rich interface to the media database. Customer satisfaction depends on performance functionality and capacity of the webservice provided.

By using the new interface more functionality can be presented to the customer, differentiating Sanoma digital from other publishers and media providers.

Confidential

keeping government systems healthy

Providing mixed services to improve infrastructure

The Business Problem

A Dutch government organisation manages large amounts of sensitive information and relies on 24 x 7 uptime of secure databases. Core IT systems needed upgrading. Requirements included high uptime and reliability, future scalability and ease of maintenance.

Competa Services and Solutions

Competa consultants designed, built and implemented a completely new environment based on SuSE linux running on HP servers and connected to EMC storage. The system was designed specifically to accommodate large ORACLE database instances and equipped with monitoring software and multiple levels of redundancy to ensure operational reliability.

A Competa On-Demand Support contract was put in place to cover second and third line support and disaster contingency. One of our senior consultants trained government staff to perform basic systems maintenance and interface with our On-Demand service.

As part of an on-going education program, Competa then designed and organized training tailor-made for the customers' technical staff. The training introduced SuSE Linux, and give further instruction on the basic tools to manage and troubleshoot Linux systems. The training was given in workshop style, spread over a number of weeks to give time to practice what was learnt, and focused on the customers' specific infrastructure and organization.

Technical staff are now more confident to do basic first line operations and management on their Linux systems, resulting in smooth day-to-day operations and excellent communication with 2nd and 3rd line support.

The Result

By taking advantage of a combination of Consulting, On-Demand and Training services, the Dutch government has improved IT infrastructure performance and ensured cost-effective operational reliability.