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News
2006 Archive
Digica & Halcyon agreement covers 48 System i™ (iSeries™, AS/400™)
Date Posted: 24/05/06
Supplier of managed IT services to the public and private sector, Digica has signed a four-year contract with Halcyon Software for the use of Halcyon Data Center Management Suite, the company’s suite of System i™ (iSeries™, AS/400™) systems monitoring, management and automation tools.
Under the terms of the contract, Digica will have access to the Halcyon Data Center Management Suite across its Nottingham and Leeds data centres and high availability suites. The software will maintain and manage an estate of 48 System i™ (iSeries™, AS/400™) systems and will affect 13,000 users. The four year ‘pay-as-you-go’ software rental basis of the contract was particularly attractive as it fits neatly with the commercial model Digica offers to its customers.
Digica operates purpose-built data centres in Nottingham, Leeds and Warrington in the UK, Cape Town in South Africa and, through a partner company, in New Jersey, US. Digica provides managed services and IT outsourcing to its core markets, which include mid-tier private sector organisations, local authorities and NHS trusts. Its range of IT services includes midrange server management, desktop and network management, SAP managed services, applications management and help-desk services. Services turnover is some £20m.
Digica operates three generations of System i™ (iSeries™, AS/400™) -- 30-plus 7xx series, ten 8xx series and eight i5 systems. The smallest are 720s and currently the largest are six i5 550s. Other i5 systems are one 510 and one 520. Within the next few months an i5 570 is due to be installed, while across the entire company 90 System i™ (iSeries™, AS/400™) systems are deployed. As well as the worthy estate of System i™ (iSeries™, AS/400™) systems, Digica also operates IBM’s pSeries boxes and numerous Intel systems.
Phil Carnell, Digica’s tier-one and operations manager, says: “Key to our decision to sign a four-year contract for use of the Data Center Management Suite was the exceptional functionality of the System i™ (iSeries™, AS/400™) automation tools and the integrated GUI, the ‘Enterprise Console’. The solution allows us to monitor multiple servers from a single location and automate end-of-day processes. The software will enable us to maximise performance across all our clients’ System i™ (iSeries™, AS/400™) systems without increasing manpower and minimising the need for out-of-hours support.”
By filtering and gathering important events from all servers and logical partitions, and providing the systems operators with a comprehensive overview of this information on a single graphical interface, Halcyon’s Enterprise Console will enable the IT support team to effectively monitor Digica’s entire network of System i™ (iSeries™, AS/400™) systems across remote data centres.
Meanwhile, the individual System i™ (iSeries™, AS/400™) modules within Halcyon Data Center Management Suite will automatically monitor and manage all of Digica’s customers’ systems. Any problems, or even potential problems, will be alerted back to Digica’s systems operators through messages appearing on the Enterprise Console’s GUI.
“The Halcyon Enterprise Console will form the central hub of our outsourcing operations for the System i™ (iSeries™, AS/400™) platform,” says Carnell. “Having the use of all the System i™ (iSeries™, AS/400™) solutions means we will have peace of mind that all processes can be automated as much as possible, minimising the need for human intervention. Also, as we are responsible for many systems, the functionality of the integrated Enterprise Console will give Digica the opportunity to exploit the benefits of having a single focal point for all system alerts. In turn, this will give our customers improved response times to issues which previously would have required operator intervention.”
Established in 1996, Peterborough-based Halcyon Software specialises in System i™ (iSeries™, AS/400™) and Intel servers, Aix, Linux and Unix systems management software. With a number of international partnerships in Europe, the US and Australasia, the company is a member of IBM PartnerWorld for Developers and System i™ (iSeries™, AS/400™) Tools Network”.
--Frank Booty, industry reporter. |
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