Microsoft Server Product PortfolioCustomer Solution Case Study

Virgin Media Adopts Operations Framework Through Services Engagement

OverviewCountry or Region: United KingdomIndustry: Telecommunications—Communications service providers

Customer ProfileVirgin Media was the first company in the U.K. to offer broadband, TV, home phone, and mobile services from a single provider. In 2010, it reported revenue of around £4 billion.

Business SituationThe Windows Server IT team at Virgin Media made a significant investment in Microsoft infrastructure management technology, but was not getting maximum business value from it.

SolutionMicrosoft Services recommended a Premier Support service called Proactive Monitoring with Operations Manager to achieve knowledge transfer and improve business process improvements.

Benefits Proactive monitoring Excellent service Improved performance Enhanced processes

“The deliverables from Premier Support resulted in a complete transformation of service delivery with System Center Operations Manager and paved the way for a strategic review of our IT infrastructure.”

Keith Stroud, Technical Analyst and Windows Server Team Lead, Virgin Media

With almost 10 million customers and annual revenues of around £4 billion, Virgin Media is the biggest Virgin company in the world. It was the first company in the United Kingdom (U.K.) to offer broadband, TV, and home phone, and mobile services from a single provider. It also now offers fast broadband to more than half of U.K. households. In 2010, it invested in infrastructure monitoring technology, but its Windows Server IT support team—called Wintel—needed to improve its processes to get maximum value from Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007. It called on Microsoft Services Premier Support and participated in a Proactive Monitoring with Operations Manager engagement before adopting the Microsoft Operations Framework. As a result, Virgin Media has successfully reduced systems alerts by a factor of 30—resulting in higher staff productivity and improved internal service.

SituationVirgin Media is a globally recognised telecommunications business, with its head office in the United Kingdom (U.K.). The company has pioneered the development of home entertainment technology, testing some of the world’s fastest broadband speeds, as well as being the first to offer high-definition and 3-D on-demand TV.

Technology underpins all operations at Virgin Media. They range from the customer service team, which uses it to support millions of customers, to the sales and marketing teams that develop new product offerings. Keith Stroud, Technical Analyst and Windows Server Team Lead, Virgin Media, says: “We can’t operate without technology, but our challenge is in improving our infrastructure management processes, adopting best practice, and developing our people.”

To meet its requirements, Virgin Media uses mostly Microsoft technology, together with third-party applications, running on the Windows Server operating system. The Windows Server service team—called Wintel—is responsible for ensuring that Windows Server runs smoothly, supporting all business applications used by the company. “We manage all Windows Server operating systems. If there‘s an issue it affects various business-critical services and applications,” says Stroud. In 2008, the Wintel team invested in Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 to help manage the Windows Server estate more efficiently with fewer manual processes. But in the early stages of the deployment, a key challenge was to identify the most important system

alerts and determining who should be responsible for the issues, through to resolution.

Stroud says: “We couldn’t distinguish between critical and non-critical alerts. As a team, we didn’t have agreed processes in place for managing problem resolutions and as a result, we were constantly reacting to situations, rather than preventing them.”

Often, the team only learned about an issue when it was raised through the internal helpdesk system. “Service inefficiency increased as the business grew as did our administrative overheads,” says Stroud. The team became aware of dissatisfaction with the service provision and recognised the need for knowledge transfer to change its approach to managing the Windows Server estate, starting with Active Directory.

SolutionJames Marsden—the Microsoft Technical Account Manager (TAM) for Virgin Media—works closely with the Wintel team. He understood team members’ increasing frustration with the reactive, unstructured approach to problem solving with System Center Operations Manager 2007. To resolve the issues, Marsden recommended that Virgin Media sign up for a Microsoft Premier Support engagement called Proactive Monitoring with Operations Manager.

This intensive two-week engagement with Microsoft Services Operations Consultants encompasses skills and knowledge transfer, along with best practice guidance for processes based on the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) and the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). It has helped

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“Working with Operations Consultant Naresh Kohli opened our eyes to how we could work more proactively. It helped us create successful technical processes, and a more effective and knowledgeable team.”

Keith Stroud, Technical Analyst and Windows Server Team Lead, Virgin Media

Virgin Media proactively monitor its Windows Server estate, while ensuring that clear processes have been developed based on the MOF. This has ensured that all alerts raised through System Center Operations Manager 2007 have a supporting process behind them.

The delivery focused on improving the company’s Active Directory management pack with the support of three Microsoft Services Consultants: Premier Field Engineers Simon Reynolds and Rob Davies, and Operations Consultant Naresh Kohli. The outcome of this proactive engagement was that the Virgin Media Wintel team fine-tuned its System Center Operations Manager 2007 environment. Now when an alert is raised a resulting action needs to be taken—the system is no longer just a reactive toolset, it can identify new issues before users encounter them.

The next step arose from the Virgin Media team wanting to broaden its knowledge of the MOF, with an aim to provide a better service throughout the business and adopt best practice. Marsden recommended that 14 members of the Wintel team attend a private delivery of the two-day MOF 4.0 Foundation Workshop delivered at Microsoft U.K. and led by Operations Consultant Simon Hall. The course included providing knowledge transfer about the management layer and associated service management functions.

Marsden says: “In between delivering the theory, the Wintel team took part in a simulation exercise, which put theory into practice, but also helped the team interact. As a result, the course became a team-

building activity as well as providing knowledge transfer.”

Stroud adds: “At the end of the course, we took an examination. So in addition to enhancing their skills, most team members also have a formal qualification to add to their personal development portfolio.”

BenefitsWorking with Microsoft Services Premier Support resources, the Virgin Media Wintel team members have gained an appreciation of the importance of people and processes in extending best practice to the business. The MOF is now being adopted more widely across other areas of IT. Stroud says: “The deliverables from Premier Support resulted in a complete transformation of service delivery with System Center Operations Manager and paved the way for a strategic review of our IT infrastructure. Our group is now seen as one to aspire to, with several other Virgin Media IT teams adopting our approach to improve their own performance.”

Critical Alerts Reduced by 97 Per Cent Through Proactive Monitoring Following the Proactive Monitoring with Operations Manager engagement, system alerts for Active Directory were reduced. This demonstrated the value of Microsoft Services Premier Support Consultants in transferring knowledge to ensure more proactive monitoring of the Windows Server estate. By fine-tuning the monitoring rules and configurations, the number of overall warning alerts received for System Center Operations Manager was reduced by 97 per cent.

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“Since the Premier Support workshops, we’ve won the best services team award several months in a row. We are now perceived as a high-performing business unit.”

Keith Stroud, Technical Analyst and Windows Server Team Lead, Virgin Media

Stroud says: “Working with Operations Consultant Naresh Kohli opened our eyes to how we could work more proactively. It helped us create successful technical processes, and a more effective and knowledgeable team.”

Wintel Team Gains Recognition for Excellent Service The success in proactively monitoring the Windows Server estate has been recognised throughout Virgin Media. The company has a number of other autonomous IT teams—one for Microsoft SQL Server and another for Microsoft Exchange Server.

In future, thanks to Premier Support there will be less silo working and a company-wide commitment to best practice. The technology roadmap for the Wintel team is now defined, with plans to upgrade to Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2012 when it is released. Stroud says: “Since the Premier Support workshops, we’ve won the best services team award several months in a row. We’re now perceived as a high-performing business unit that provides a consistently good service.”

Performance Improves with 62 Per Cent of Support Tickets Raised by Wintel With Microsoft Services Premier Support Consultants, the Wintel team created an escalation path with clear responsibilities within the team, which has helped to boost performance. Stroud says: “The workshop atmosphere was exciting and inspiring, and encouraged team building. By applying a consistent methodology to fixing incidents, we’ve now reduced resolution lead time, so employees can be more productive.”

The Wintel team is on target to resolve the same amount of support tickets for 2011 as 2010. But 62 per cent of issues are now raised by the Wintel team, which demonstrates the value of the new proactive processes based on alerts received from System Center Operations Manager. The Wintel team has contributed to the productivity of the service desk and the whole business because users don’t have to spend time raising support calls. In addition, 30 per cent of priority tickets are now logged out of hours, meaning they’re fixed with no impact to the business.

Stroud says: “Since the Proactive Monitoring with Operations Manager process improvements were implemented the average time to recovery performance is more than an hour faster for Priority 1 and Priority 2 calls. Finally, the Wintel team has also met its targets on its internal scorecard metrics.” Microsoft Services Delivers Process and People Transformation Microsoft Services Premier Support helped Stroud’s team develop several initiatives that improve service delivery, and reduce the number of incidents that create user downtime.

One example is the round-the-clock alert system that forwards notification to an appropriate team member, so a problem can be fixed before the next working day if needed. Another is the automatic tracking of rule changes within System Center Operations Manager 2007. Stroud says: “The value Microsoft Services Premier Support delivered to Virgin Media is

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“Since the Premier Support workshops, we’ve won the best services team award several months in a row. We’re now perceived as a high-performing business unit that provides a consistently good service.”

Keith Stroud, Technical Analyst and Windows Server Team Lead, Virgin Media

unquestionable. I’d go as far as to say that working with the team changed our lives.” Microsoft Server Product PortfolioFor more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to:www.microsoft.com/servers/default.mspx

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For More InformationFor further information about Microsoft products and services, please visit www.microsoft.com/uk or call 0870 60 10 100* For hearing impaired customers with a Minicom, contact: 0870 50 30 400*  *Lines are open 8am–6pm, Monday to Friday. Please note, numbers prefixed 0870 will be charged at national call rates. For details of national call rate charges, please contact your telecommunications provider.

For more information about Virgin Media products and services, visit the website at:www.virginmedia.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published November 2011

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Microsoft System Center Operations

Manager 2007− Windows Server 2003

Services− Proactive Monitoring with Operations

Manager

Solutions− Microsoft Operations Framework 4.0

Technologies− Active Directory