Major High Street Retailer Maintains Strong Reputation ...



Overview

Country or Region: United Kingdom

Industry: Retail

Customer Profile

John Lewis Partnership is a highly respected retail group in the United Kingdom, operating in both the department store and supermarket verticals.

Business Situation

The company needed a system that could ensure that a significant infrastructure upgrade was managed without impact to the level of service expected by its customers and suppliers.

Solution

The company turned to Microsoft® Operations Manager 2005 to proactively manage its infrastructure and identify issues before they became problems.

Benefits

■ Early identification of problems

■ Extensive inbuilt knowledge base

■ Single point of control

■ Ease of use

■ Increased reliability

| | |“Most of the systems we tested alerted us to potential issues, but Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 was the only one which told us what actions we needed to take to resolve them.”

Tony Godwin, Technical Strategist, John Lewis

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| | | |The John Lewis Partnership is one of the largest and most respected retail groups in the United |

| | | |Kingdom, operating 27 John Lewis department stores, the Waitrose chain of more than 160 supermarkets,|

| | | |and online shopping services. The company has two head offices, several distribution sites, more than|

| | | |63,000 staff, and had revenues of more than £5 billion (U.S.$9.4 billion) in 2004. Like many large |

| | | |retail organisations, a diverse IT infrastructure had evolved, with five medium-sized Microsoft® |

| | | |Windows NT® Server version 4.0 domains, and Microsoft Windows NT Workstation version 4.0 in each |

| | | |Waitrose branch. As a result, there were over 160 separate PC networks to manage. The organisation |

| | | |wanted to ensure that as it moved to upgrade its infrastructure to Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 |

| | | |with Active Directory®, it could pre-empt any potential system issues. To achieve this, it turned to |

| | | |Microsoft Operations Manager 2005. |

| | | | |

| | | |[pic] |

| | | | |

Situation

The John Lewis Partnership is one of the top 10 retail businesses in the United Kingdom, operating 27 John Lewis department stores and more than 160 Waitrose supermarkets across the country. It turned over more than £5 billion (U.S.$9.4 billion) in 2004.

The company’s size and diversity had resulted in a very diverse IT infrastructure. It was operating with five medium sized Microsoft® Windows NT® Server version 4.0 domains, as well as Microsoft Windows NT Workstation version 4.0 in each of the Waitrose branches.

The IT department was responsible for more than 160 separate PC networks as well as a plethora of Microsoft Windows® 95, Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0, and Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional client computers.

The organisation recognised a number of economies it could enjoy by bringing together this diverse structure under a Microsoft framework because of its wide range of products. An upgrade of this type would provide the PC environment the organisation requires to support the many business applications needed to supply the level of service its customers and suppliers expect.

It needed a proactive method of monitoring its systems in the new architecture. Tony Godwin, Technical Strategist, John Lewis, explains, “It is fair to say that in the past monitoring of our PC networks was very much based around reactive techniques, mainly as a result of investigating a problem.

“With the change in focus towards providing a business critical PC platform, we identified that we needed a monitoring tool, because we knew that any down time would be costly for us,” he says.

Solution

The John Lewis Partnership is now in the process of migrating to a new IT infrastructure that consists of a single resource domain based on the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system, the Active Directory® directory service, and the Microsoft Windows XP operating system desktop clients. This process is taking place step by step to ensure that any issues with the new infrastructure are recognised and acted upon before they become a problem.

The new architecture, expected to be completed by the end of 2006, could potentially cover:

• More than 200 sites

• More than 2,000 servers

• More than 15,000 workstations

• More than 2,500 point of sale devices built

on Microsoft Windows XP Embedded

• More than 2,500 scales built on Windows XP Embedded

• More than 10,000 hand held devices built on Microsoft Windows CE version 3.0

“This has changed the focus of the system,” says Godwin, “Our IT infrastructure was previously simply a file and print network, and it is now becoming an enterprise wide infrastructure that also runs business critical applications such as the Waitrose point-of-sale application, and customer-facing applications in the John Lewis department stores.

“What this means is that while we could not tolerate systems outages previously, our reliance on these systems has moved to a much higher level.”

The company looked at several network management tools before turning to Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005, which is part of Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software. “We gathered evaluation criteria from various teams on both the support and the development side of the IT division and then tested several products on the test network, which mirrors the live environment,” says Godwin. “Each product was scored against the evaluation criteria and MOM 2005 came out on top.”

The company is introducing MOM 2005 in stages while it becomes comfortable with the full range of its functions. “In the first stage we have used MOM 2005 to monitor the running of Active Directory, because it is critical to making everything else work,” says Godwin. “We expect to have about three hundred Domain Controllers running Active Directory across the entire estate and we will maintain all of them through MOM 2005.”

“We are now commencing a project to see how we want to utilise MOM 2005 even further. It could be used monitor to our Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 databases, print services, and our [Microsoft] Systems Management Server (SMS) infrastructure to ensure that the whole operation runs as smoothly as possible,” he says.

MOM 2005 is currently monitoring activity on more than 60 servers, which includes Domain Controllers located in 23 John Lewis branches, as well as the SQL Server 2000, which holds the MOM 2005 database.

Benefits

Early Identification of Problems

According to Godwin, MOM 2005 is not only drawing attention to potential new conflicts, but has also quickly identified a fundamental configuration issue on one of its key networks.

“The biggest surprise came when we installed MOM 2005 on our acceptance layer, which mirrors the live environment that is used as a final checkpoint before changes go live on the system. What we did not realise until MOM was installed was that it was misconfigured. If this had continued to go unnoticed, not only would our testing have been compromised, the whole network could have eventually ground to a halt. This was quite a wake-up call,” says Godwin.

“We now have the ability to highlight and respond to potential issues before they become problems, and we have been able to resolve issues with little or no operational impact on end users,” he says. “At the end of the day that’s key.”

Extensive Built-in Knowledge Base

Using the built-in knowledge databases, the organisation has been able to resolve issues before they have the potential to have any significant impact on the business.

“The biggest problem in the past has been that even if you diagnosed a problem, it is difficult to know how to fix it. A lot of time was wasted trying to find a way round an issue just to keep the system running,” explains Godwin.

“One of the things that really made MOM 2005 stand out is the built in knowledge database within each management pack,” he says. “The people that wrote the management packs are the people who wrote the system component or application itself.

“Most of the systems we tested alerted us to potential issues, but Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 was the only one which told us what actions we needed to take to resolve them,” Godwin says. “We can also complement this built-in knowledge with our information if necessary and have found this invaluable.”

Single Point of Control

Godwin draws attention to the fact that all of the required tools to maintain the system are now available from a single console. This means issues are recognised and resolved far more quickly.

“With MOM 2005 we can service all of our servers regardless of location from a single console,” he says. “We drill down into problems and isolate them without having to physically be there. This is a far more effective way of discovering where a problem lies and working out how to fix it.”

Ease of Use

Maintaining and troubleshooting the system is significantly easier using MOM 2005. Godwin says, “We had some help with the initial set up. Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Computacenter came in for two days to assist getting the infrastructure up and running onsite. That was all the training we needed because of the system’s intuitive nature and the knowledge databases. We may need more support as we grow it, but at this stage that was all we needed.”

MOM 2005 also increases the ease at which the system’s health can be reported. “MOM 2005 provides many reports out-of- the-box and we currently produce weekly reports for IT managers,” says Godwin. “We will also be looking at creating our own custom reports in a format suitable for senior IT management in the near future.”

Increased Reliability

John Lewis is putting business critical operations onto its Microsoft infrastructure for the first time. Within Waitrose, the organisation is currently piloting a mission critical point of sale system on the infrastructure, as well as some customer facing applications for the group as a whole.

“In the multiple entity domain environments we had previously, we operated very much with a file and print back office,” says Godwin. “What we are doing now is putting the frontline, customer-facing applications on this infrastructure. It simply has to be reliable and it has to work.

“Our systems have to be available 24/7 and we have to be certain that we don’t compromise either the point of sale application in Waitrose, or the selling applications at John Lewis,” says Godwin. “We are a customer facing operation and they rely on us. We have to be sure that our IT services are always there because any down time when the customer cannot get what they want is bad for our reputation.”

Microsoft Windows Server System

Microsoft Windows Server System is a comprehensive, integrated, and interoperable server infrastructure that helps reduce the complexity and costs of building, deploying, connecting, and operating agile business solutions. Windows Server System helps customers create new value for their business through the strategic use of their IT assets. With the Windows Server operating system as its foundation, Windows Server System delivers dependable infrastructure for data management and analysis; enterprise integration; customer, partner, and employee portals; business process automation; communications and collaboration; and core IT operations including security, deployment, and systems management.

For more information about Windows Server System, go to:

‌windowsserversystem

Microsoft Smarter Retailing Initiative

The Microsoft Smarter Retailing Initiative helps retailers win today by leveraging current investments, and win tomorrow by easing delivery of new retail experiences. Consisting of Smarter Shopping, Smarter Selling and Smarter Operations, the Smarter Retailing Initiative is designed to close the loop between the retailer’s strategy, the in-store execution and familiar technologies already in the consumer’s hands.

For more information, go to:

smartretail

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| |Software and Services

■ Products

− Microsoft Operations Manager 2005

− Microsoft SQL Server 2000

− Microsoft Systems Management Server

− Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional

− Microsoft Windows CE version 3.0

− Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 |Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0

− Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition

− Microsoft Windows XP Professional

■ Technologies

− Microsoft Active Directory

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Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Active Directory, Windows, the Windows logo, Windows NT, Windows Server, and Windows Server System are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Document published January 2006 | | |

For More Information

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For more information about John Lewis Partnership products and services, visit the Web site at: johnlewispartnership.co.uk

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