| "Over the course of development, we expanded our network
capacity by a factor of 400 and now average about a gigabyte per
day. So we rely heavily on the performance of Windows NT Server."
Dennis Walsh |
Industry
Electric utilities
Business Solution
Enterprise-wide client-server system based on the Microsoft BackOffice
family providing information services to employees at offices
across four states
Architecture
A comprehensive network connecting a variety of LANs, WANs, mainframes,
minicomputers, servers, workstations, and PC-based desktops
Products and Services Used
Microsoft Office Professional
Microsoft Select License Pak
Microsoft SNA Server
Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft Systems Management Server
Microsoft Test
Microsoft Visual C++TM
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows for Workgroups
Microsoft Windows NT Server
Microsoft Windows NT Workstation
Benefits
Has dramatically improved access to information; has helped reduce
information-support headcount by 60 percent while increasing supported
desktops eightfold; anticipate $5 million in yearly savings for
new software products and $200,000 in initial savings for labor
in new software installations
To meet this challenge, the leaders of Entergy rethought the company's entire information strategy-and with good reason. On the system that was then in place, Entergy employees scattered across four states worked with an assortment of hardware, systems, and applications. Integration, communication, and compatibility were minimal; standards were virtually nonexistent; and fewer than 1 in 10 employees had a personal computer.
As a result, decision support was slow, inconsistent, and costly. System support was costly as well, and becoming more so every day. Even as formal downsizing began, Entergy was tripling its installed base of desktop personal computers "We had lots of new computers on people's desks but no idea of how we would support them all," says Dennis Walsh, Vice President and Chief Information Officer.
Desktop applications imposed another expense. "Because we were using a diverse and incompatible set of applications throughout the corporation, we couldn't leverage our buying power or our support costs," Walsh points out. "As we watched the number of desktop platforms grow, we knew this cost-inefficiency would grow as well."
| "The Microsoft BackOffice products are ideal because of
the distributed nature of our business. With some 200 servers
of varying speeds and capabilities, our network is very peer-to-peer
oriented, so that each of our 10,000 users deals with three to
five servers. Under such conditions, licensing for Microsoft is
much more cost-effective than for Novell, under which we would
need 30,000 licenses."
Dennis Walsh |
The lack of integrated, enterprise-wide productivity applications was yet another area of concern. With 14 time-entry systems, a manual budget system, and various word-processing systems, incompatibility between them all posed problems throughout the organization. "We had so many different forms of information that we couldn't make business decisions with the efficiency or confidence we needed," Walsh says. "At times, we felt like we were running blind."
Seeking a Comprehensive Solution
In mid-1992, the leaders of Entergy outlined a new corporate-information strategy that addressed these challenges. In response, Walsh began working with a team headed by Clif Triplett, Director of Systems Design and Telecommunications, to define specifications for a comprehensive, enterprise-wide client-server system. Team members considered the need for reliability, standards, convenient licensing, and-above all-integration and coexistence with the company's existing UNIX® platforms. With these requirements in mind, they decided to develop the system based on the products now known as the Microsoft® BackOffice family.
"The Microsoft products were the best fit in their ability to provide transparent integration among our various offices, reliable operation even if a server should go down, and a way to impose standards," Walsh explains. "They also had a licensing approach that suited our peer-to-peer design far more cost-effectively than that of Novell®, the main installed competitor."
Rapid deployment of desktop platforms began in late 1992, and full-scale software development began in mid-1993. In early 1995, developers released the full production version of the client-server system.
Access Across the Enterprise
Today, virtually every one of the 10,000 Entergy employees has his or her own desktop system running the Windows®, Windows® for Workgroups, or Windows NT Workstation operating system. These desktops are connected through local and wide area networks to 3 IBM® mainframes, 42 UNIX-based database servers, and dozens of other servers based on NFS (network file system) and the Windows NT Server operating system. Microsoft TCP/IP provides the primary network protocol. As Walsh reports, "It's a very mixed bag, but that's not been a problem, because the Microsoft BackOffice products work extremely well with our UNIX systems."
Through a Microsoft Office Professional front end, all users have transparent access to SYBASE®, ORACLE®, and Microsoft SQL ServerTM databases and internally developed applications. So far, four Microsoft SQL Server systems support an assortment of databases, which range from 100 megabytes to 2 gigabytes and are accessed by more than 500 workstations. On these databases, up to 75 concurrent users generate 2 to 10 transactions per second.
| "This system embodies the Entergy corporate vision of
being able to deliver the right information to the right people
at the right time, so they can easily make quick and effective
decisions. For the present, Microsoft products provide us with
a consistent approach to implementing this vision and, for the
future, a launchpad for even greater enhancements."
Dennis Walsh |
All custom applications on the system have been or are being developed in a client-server model, and most of them have PowerBuilderTM, Microsoft Access, or Microsoft Excel front ends. An integrated set of new applications support time entry, budgeting, work management, mapping, general ledger, and facilities management.
Dramatic Cost Savings, Efficiency Improvements
By supporting seamless and transparent integration across legacy and new technology alike, the new client-server system at Entergy has reduced costs dramatically. In information support alone, Entergy has decreased headcount by 60 percent while increasing the number of systems supported by a factor of eight. Desktop-software costs also have dropped significantly. With users standardized on Microsoft Office, Entergy is freed from upgrading mainframe-based applications and is eligible for volume-purchase agreements. "As a result, we expect to save $5 million yearly on new desktop software," Walsh says.
Applications developed and running under the new client-server system are providing another area of improvement. Today, a single time-entry system and a client-server-based budget system, both distributed throughout the company, provide virtually instant access to comprehensive, mission-critical information-access that used to take weeks or even months.
Implementing a Vision for the Future
As development continues at Entergy, Microsoft products will play an increasing role. Leading the list is Microsoft Systems Management Server, which now is in use at one facility and eventually will be used to distribute software and perform remote diagnostics on 850 client workstations. "With Systems Management Server we anticipate initial cost reduction of $200,000 on new software installations alone," Triplett says.
Other short-term plans call for Microsoft Windows NT Server to run on all server systems and Windows NT Workstation to run on an increasing number of client systems. "With its multitasking capabilities Windows NT Workstation is now helping Entergy to make the most of hardware resources on several hundred workstations," Walsh points out. "So we're now evaluating it as the platform for an additional several thousand."
Microsoft SQL Server will play a larger role as well, once developers upgrade dozens of Microsoft Access-based applications to SQL Server. To take further advantage of the integrated nature of Microsoft products, Entergy also will install Microsoft SNA Server under TCP/IP as a replacement for a DLC protocol that previously connected 4000 workstations to four IBM mainframes.
Beyond the cost savings, Walsh points out another, overriding benefit of the Microsoft BackOffice-based system. "This system embodies the Entergy corporate vision of being able to deliver the right information to the right people at the right time, so they can easily make quick and effective decisions," he says. "For the present, Microsoft products provide us with a consistent approach to implementing this vision and, for the future, a launchpad for even greater enhancements."
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Customer Support Centre at (800) 563-9048. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information via the World Wide Web, go to http://www.microsoft.com.
© 1995 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT
MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Microsoft, MS, and Windows are registered trademarks and Visual
C++ and Windows NT are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. IBM
is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation.
Novell is a registered trademark of Novell, Inc. UNIX is a registered
trademark of Novell, Inc., in the United States and other countries,
licensed exclusively through X/Open Company, Ltd. ORACLE is a
registered trademark of Oracle Corporation. PowerBuilder is a trademark of Powersoft
Corporation. SYBASE is a registered trademark of Sybase Inc.
Microsoft Corporation One Microsoft Way Redmond, WA 98052-6399
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