Alcatel-Lucent in the U.S. designs and delivers the systems, services and software that drive nextgeneration communications networks. Its 35,000 employees are served by an infrastructure comprising 4,000 heterogeneous servers and 700 applications. The Alcatel-Lucent heritage stretches back more than a century, and like any company with such longevity, its internal systems and IT infrastructure included redundant and disconnected tools and processes. There were 14 different help desks, for instance, each responsible for monitoring its own procedures.
With the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 and increasing competition in the telecommunications market, Alcatel-Lucent was ready to undertake the difficult task of redefining IT to drive competitive advantage for the business.
Initially, the company devised a tactical approach to achieving Sarbanes-Oxley compliance in time to meet the September 2003 deadline. The plan would have included in-house development of standard processes, many of which were to be implemented without supporting tools.
The extension of the Sarbanes-Oxley certification date, however, afforded Alcatel-Lucent the opportunity to move beyond vertical process development to implementing best-in-class integrated processes and tools. This forward-looking approach would help Alcatel-Lucent achieve ongoing compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 ? today and in the future.
Choosing a partner
With less than one year before the certification deadline, Alcatel-Lucent knew it was no time to reinvent the wheel. Sheila Bridge, IT Director for Alcatel-Lucent, turned to HP. Says Bridge, "We needed a complete IT Service Management solution that we could implement quickly ? a proven solution that could deliver pre-integrated designs for processes and tools." With input from HP, Alcatel-Lucent decided on an endstate architecture founded on the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework, HP IT Service Management (ITSM) best practices and HP Service Desk Software and HP Operations Management Software. The solution would be linked to the company's IT delivery model to support the management of applications, infrastructure and network.
Aligning processes
To provide evidence of internal controls and design effectiveness required for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, Alcatel-Lucent needed to define a single global standard for IT work processes, coordinated through HP Service Desk Software.
The project team of 150 Alcatel-Lucent IT staff and 34 HP consultants set out to identify, re-design, document and integrate 12 global ITSM operating processes including Incident Management, Configuration Management, and Service Level Management.
World class software
Once the process alignment was complete, Bridge and her team needed to incorporate the processes into a working architecture. Together with HP, they implemented HP Service Desk Software for ITSM process automation and HP Operations Management Software for continuous infrastructure monitoring. The HP Software products are built around a common Configuration Management Database (CMDB) housing 20,000 Configuration Items (CIs), including software, hardware, network components and the relationships among them.
The sharing of configuration data across management applications allows Alcatel-Lucent to improve service quality and management efficiency. In addition, integration of the HP Software products enables automated feeds of IT events to the help desk. The result: faster ticketing and dispatch of incidents. The solution also leveraged existing Alcatel-Lucent systems, such as Alcatel-Lucent VitalSuite? Performance Management software. Working closely with HP, the IT team developed an interface between Alcatel-Lucent VitalSuite and the HP Software platforms to allow proactive detection of IT issues and faster problem remediation.
Workshops, buy-in, education
To ensure a successful implementation, the HP consulting team led structured process workshops to identify any gaps that might have otherwise impeded the implementation. Process walk-throughs covered review and buy-in.
Next HP held a three-week process, tools, design, and integration session; through this session, the design and integration team determined how the 12 work processes would integrate with those tools. The team identified the scope of the implementation, and developed a blueprint providing a complete, integrated view of how the processes would work. Alcatel-Lucent and HP also developed and delivered ITIL training to more than 1,000 IT professionals in 10 countries over a six-week period, helping to ensure full compliance with the new processes and controls.
A shining example
With the help of HP, Alcatel-Lucent transformed its IT environment ? spanning people, processes and technology ? to achieve Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 compliance in just 11 months. "We passed our Sarbanes-Oxley audit with flying colors," Bridge says.
