Business Description

Leading UK banking and financial services group employing over 70,000 staff required support in outsourcing its IT desktop services to a third party organisation.


Business Challenge

This major banking and financial services group had signed a seven-year deal for the supply and management of 30,000 desktops and associated back-end infrastructure.  The initial implementation and migration project was estimated to be valued at around £75M, whilst the remainder of the seven-year contract was targeted at £200M.  The first implementation of the new desktop was due 10 months after the award of contract and would enable a saving of around £3M per month once completed.  The major challenge facing this project was the ability to design and implement a solution for 30,000 users within 10 months and still ensure that the end solution provided all the expected functionality and met the rigorous FSA regulations.

The Solution

Like many organisations looking to outsource its IT services / infrastructure our client realised that they had not conducted such a large outsourcing deal before and therefore did not have the in-house expertise to assist.  As a result Xarus were placed into strategic roles within the project to assist with the general implementation and migration and acted on behalf of the client.  

The end solution was a Common Operating Environment (COE) utilising Windows XP and Office 2007.  The back-end infrastructure was build around a Windows 2007 Active Directory with a mixture of thin client and fat applications.  Systems management was provided by a Tivoli solution with interfaces into call management systems.

Services

Xarus provided project management and service management expertise. Xarus were able to offer advice on best practice and common pitfalls to the client ensuring that a smooth implementation and migration took place.