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Case study: Centrica IBIS staff were initially
contracted to Centrica Information Systems, based at the Automobile
Association’s main call-centre in Cheadle Cheadle is primarily a sales
environment and as such strict SLA policies are in place to minimise the
business impact of systems downtime. They are responsible for supporting
users and administering network resources at this site and at other AA and
British Gas sites in the surrounding area. Different server architectures
exist at each site, although this is primarily NT4 Server and Workstation,
with a mixture of Netware4 and Netware3.2 servers providing file and print
services. They are responsible for the administration of corporate servers
as well as managing applications with SMS. Microsoft Exchange 5.5 is
employed as the corporate messaging system across the organisation. They
are also required to support a diverse range of bespoke applications for
various business functions, e.g. SAP Finance Solution, Anodyne GQL software
to interface with MS SQL Server for Vehicle Data Collection Applications,
and various terminal emulation applications to interface with UNIX and
Mainframe systems. Aside from the support role, our team is also involved
in a Windows 2000 project, which is currently in the Pilot stage of
development at British Gas Services Sites in the Greater Manchester area. In
this environment applications are delivered locally via SMS and also
executed server side utilising 2000 Terminal Server and Citrix Metaframe
technology. Provision of on-site support to both 2nd/3rd level, acting as
single point of call for all NT and related application issues across site,
following calls through to completion within SLA period
- NT and NetWare User/Group administration
- Application deployment and remote configuration with SMS Server
- Exchange 5.5 user administration
- Support and configuration of Remote Access solutions inc. ISDN routing
using CISCO 600 series and ASCEND pipeline solutions, in addition to
typical Dial-up networking over PSTN
- Voice Support inc. ISDX user/extension administration
- Backup Management with Arcserve inc. Revision of Tape rotation
strategies, validation and troubleshooting
- TCP/IP and IPX/SPX printing maintenance
- Maintenance of Cat5 structured cabling infrastructure
- PC and Server Hardware fault diagnosis, delegation to third party
hardware contractors whilst monitoring time scales for effective
resolution
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