The NT architecture team is leading the way
In the fiercely competitive arena of global telecommunications, a company has to win and keep new customers. MCI Telecommunications continues to expand its core long-distance business while developing new and emerging markets. Windows NT is a key technology component in the company's aggressive $18.5 billion strategy to capture market share in paging, Internet, and specialized business services as well as in the $100 billion US market for local phone service. Founded in 1968 and headquartered in Washington, DC, MCI ranks 59th in the 1996 FORTUNE 500. About 55,000 employees work in 300 offices worldwide.
In 1995, MCI started an ambitious migration to NT 4.0 in 20 call centers
across the US. The migration is part of an ongoing improvement process that
includes upgrading MCI's NT 3.51 architecture to NT 4.0 in call centers that have already migrated, and installing new NT 4.0 workstations and servers in those that have not migrated.
"MCI needed a secure, manageable operating system (OS) platform for the 17,000-plus seats in our call centers," said Craig Ashapa (see "Interview with Craig Ashapa") manager of NT architecture-mass markets, MCI, Atlanta, Georgia. "The call center is MCI's primary vehicle for marketing new products and services to both current and
prospective customers as well as for providing a high level of customer service to existing customers."
About 400 to 1000 sales and service representatives work at a typical call
center. They conduct outbound telemarketing sales, handle inbound sales
generated from ad campaigns, and answer customer service calls. Redundant T1 or
DS3 lines connect each call center to MCI's main WAN/metropolitan area network.
"Before MCI went with the NT solution, it was mostly an OS/2 shop,"
said Ashapa. "The customer service applications ran on about 6000 OS/2 machines. But it was clear that industry support for
OS/2 was waning, while support for NT was beginning to explode." So MCI decided to migrate to NT because of its industry support, systems security,
application development, systems configurability and manageability, and
compatibility with other systems.
Migration Takes a Team Effort
An NT architecture team, with members in Atlanta, Georgia, and Colorado
Springs, Colorado, spearheads MCI's migration effort. The team is responsible
for not only deploying NT, but also for managing enterprisewide systems,
supporting third-level systems, documenting systems, and managing vendor
relations. The team has migrated 4000 terminals to NT and configured more than
80 NT servers. The team continues to implement architecture migrations in the
remaining call centers.
The NT architecture team spends a great deal of time planning, designing,
pilot testing, and deploying migration techniques. After deployment, the team
refines the migration process so that it can apply the improved process to the
next assignment.
Although the architecture team is NT-savvy, it can't do everything by
itself. "Various groups are involved in the overall systems implementation,"
said Ashapa. "The NT architecture team works with application developers,
database architects and administrators, network architects and administrators,
and call center support staff. Each person provides a piece of the overall
architecture puzzle. Successful implementation of the NT solution depends on
each piece fitting together."
The migration process occurs in several phases to reduce or eliminate
downtime. First, MCI installs the servers. A typical call center features four
to six Compaq ProLiant 5000R, 4500R, or 2500R multiprocessor, rack-mount servers
with up to 512MB of RAM. Mass storage includes Compaq SMART-2 Array Controllers
in RAID-5 with hot-swap spares, numerous (as many as 17) 4.3GB to 9.1GB drives,
and Compaq DLT backup drives. Gammalink Fax boards and 100 Mbit Ethernet
complete the hardware.
Specific configurations vary according to server roles, which might include
domain control and systems management; file, application, and print serving; Web
intranet services; fax and email services; and, of course, telephony. "The
telephony applications servers interface with the MCI sales application, Oracle
database, and a dialer/switch for coordinating the autodialing capabilities of
the sales application," said Ashapa. "NT has provided a robust,
stable, manageable platform for this component of the architecture."
Existing servers run NT Server 3.51 Service Pack 5 (SP5), but MCI is upgrading
these to NT Server 4.0. New servers run NT 4.0.
In the next phase, hardware personnel install new workstations beside the
old machines after call center business hours. The call center's frontline
workstation is the Compaq DeskPro 6000 (models 5166, 5200, or XL 5133) with 32MB
of RAM and a 1GB to 2GB hard disk. A Matrox Millennium graphics card drives a 17"
Compaq monitor to round out the typical workhorse machine. About 400 to 1000 of
these NT 3.51 or NT 4.0 machines populate a call center.
After the servers and workstations are installed, the NT architecture team
tests, configures, and loads OS software images. The release of NT 4.0 has made
the team's job much easier. "For the migration of existing or new hardware
before the release of NT 4.0, the NT architecture team had to develop and test
specific OS configurations," said Ashapa. "Each machine architecture
needed a unique NT 3.51 image developed to support various hardware
configurations, such as video cards, IDE or SCSI, and Token Ring or Ethernet."
The team built the required software images, stored them on a server, and used
Microsoft tools (UPLODPRF.EXE and WINNTP.EXE) to distribute them to the
respective machines. After distribution, the team used Systems Management Server
(SMS) 1.2 SP2 to complete the system configurations.