VoiceStream Wireless needs to maximize system administrator efficiency across a widely distributed network infrastructure. With the help of Mission Critical Software, the organization has quickly prepared their current Windows NT® environment for Windows® 2000. As a result, VoiceStream will be deploying Windows 2000 less than 90 days from its release to take immediate advantage of the powerful management capabilities of the Active DirectoryTM service.
Customer Profile
Wireless provider VoiceStream offers service in 13 states and holds PCS licenses covering approximately 85 million persons.
Situation
VoiceStream Wireless Corp. is a leading provider of personal communications services (PCS) in the United States. Based in Bellevue, Washington, VoiceStream offers service in 13 states and holds PCS licenses covering approximately 90 million persons including licenses recently acquired for Dallas, Texas, and Chicago, Illinois. VoiceStream utilizes Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) technology, the world's most widely used digital standard, to provide customers more airtime, more features, and more service than are available with any other PCS carrier.
VoiceStream has a widely distributed technical infrastructure with over 4,000 Windows-based desktops, and 220 Windows NT 4.0 Servers spread across more than 100 office locations. VoiceStream currently runs their business on Windows NT with everything from Exchange and the full BackOffice Suite, to SAP R3 and PeopleSoft, to integrated email-voicemail solutions for their end consumers.
More specifically, VoiceStream has over 112 domain controllers, 20 Internet Information Servers Servers, 15 SQL Servers, 5 Exchange Servers, and 68 servers for shared file, print and application services. The file servers alone hold over 8 terabytes of data. Overall, the small IT team is responsible for 90 percent of IT infrastructure and needs to meet customers’ needs and service level agreements by maintaining high systems availability, security and performance.
Today, VoiceStream uses products from Mission Critical Software to augment the management tools in Windows NT 4.0. The OnePoint suite allows VoiceStream Wireless to conduct centralized management and maintain a hierarchical security scheme with a limited number of resources. Using OnePoint products, VoiceStream Wireless only needs three centralized administrators to manage its entire distributed network. For example, the OnePoint Directory and Resource Administrator product has reduced the time it takes to create a new account from 15 minutes to 30 seconds. Before the OnePoint suite, inactive Windows NT accounts went undetected for years; now the process of proactively identifying and deleting them is automated. Mission Critical is also playing a large role in VoiceStream’s migration to Windows 2000.
Strategy
VoiceStream has been an active participant in the Microsoft Joint Development Partner (JDP) program. As part of the program, VoiceStream has been doing extensive testing of the Windows 2000 beta releases and has created a lab environment where they have simulated a full production environment. The JDP program has supplied VoiceStream with the beta software and recommendations for deployment.
VoiceStream Wireless is using the OnePoint Domain Migration Administrator product from Mission Critical Software to plan and prepare for Windows 2000. First, the company consolidated multiple Windows NT 4.0 domains down to a single Windows NT 4.0 domain. Currently, VoiceStream is using the OnePoint Domain Migration Administrator product to model Active Directory structures for the migration to Windows 2000. Not only does the OnePoint suite allow VoiceStream to effectively manage Windows NT today, it also allows them to prepare and model their Windows 2000 migration. The process of data clean up, optimization, rationalization, and business modeling is crucial to a successful Windows 2000 rollout and the OnePoint suite is playing an integral role in this deployment.
VoiceStream will be moving this single-domain architecture to Active Directory in Windows 2000 to improve the management, strengthen the security and extend the interoperability of their network. VoiceStream has rolled out Windows 2000 Beta 3 to a number of their locations and have plans to rollout the final release into production less than 90 days after it is available to make sure they can take advantage of the benefits as soon as possible.
Benefits
With Active Directory, VoiceStream will have a single place to manage users, applications, and devices. They will avoid costly administrator trips to the desktop with the ability to delegate administrative tasks and automatically distribute software using the group policy and Intellimirror technology in Windows 2000. For example, VoiceStream will delegate administration to their field offices to reset passwords for local users in order to free up central IT resources.
On the security front, native support for Kerberos authentication will greatly increase VoiceStream’s internal network security. Also, as VoiceStream rolls out e-commerce applications, the Internet-ready security in Windows 2000 and Active Directory will speed deployment of these applications because the same security model can be used to manage both internal and external network resources.
Finally, in terms of interoperability, VoiceStream will be deploying directory-enabled network hardware so that they can allocate network bandwidth based on user roles in the company. For example, VoiceStream plans to allocate additional bandwidth to sales people at the end of a sales period when sales people are most busy. This will enable them to match network utilization to their internal business processes to optimize productivity.
VoiceStream is leveraging technology from Microsoft and Mission Critical Software that will enable them to be increasingly proactive in managing their network infrastructure and provide a higher level of service to their customers.
VoiceStream plans to use the domain migration technology from Mission Critical Software that has been licensed by Microsoft for inclusion with Windows 2000 Server. By providing a simple, task-based user interface, powerful preview and rollback capabilities, extensive reporting features and "prune and graft" support, Mission Critical Software’s domain migrator will help customers accelerate their upgrades to Windows 2000 Server from Windows NT Server 4.0.
Mission Critical Software expects to continue to enhance the upgrade and restructuring features in the OnePoint suite in future releases while maintaining compatibility with the Microsoft Active Directory Migration Tool included by Microsoft with Windows 2000 Server.
VoiceStream is a leader in technology adoption and views IT as a strategic resource and competitive differentiator in the highly competitive PCS business. The company embraces new technologies and leverages them to improve customer service. Windows 2000 marks an important advancement in technical infrastructure and VoiceStream is working with Microsoft and Mission Critical Software to get there as soon as possible.
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products or services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada information Center at (800) 563-9048. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. For more information about Mission Critical Software products, please call 888-323-6768 or 713-548-1700, or write to info@missioncritical.com.
To access information via the World Wide Web, go to:
http://www.voicestream.com/
http://www.missioncritical.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/
