Ontrack surely took a high risk by going the extra mile to display their value as solution provider to Essel Propack. However Essel did experienced some discomfort in implementing virtualization over MS Exchange 2007.

The largest specialty packaging company, Essel Propack, based in Mumbai and functioning through 21 facilities across 13 countries, faced some complications early last year. Without a centralized mailing solution for its 700 plus users, the business was mounting with hiccups in its mailing system resulting in spiralling bills for voice calls. Spread across four continents over varied time zones and different IT infrastructure, these facilities catering to diverse packaging needs of consumers demanded a robust, scalable, and an affordable solution. “We wanted to have a centralized mailing solution encompassing a common directory and address book for efficient messaging capability,” says Zoeb Adenwala, Global CIO, Essel Propack. Apart from messaging, features such as SharePoint, Office Communications Server, Digital Rights Management, Forefront client security, etc, were also essential for improved user productivity.

In May 2008, the Essel team mapped its basic requirements of designing a Microsoft Exchange 2007 solution. “The landscape demanded around 22 blade servers, which included collaboration applications like SharePoint, OCS for instant messaging, rights management server, and Symantec’s mail archiving solutions,” says Adenwala.

The Learning Curve

The technological and management learnings made Ontrack experiment the best practices that evolved into an innovative ‘Solution as a provider’ model. “Through this project, we realized that customers are beginning to buy hardware and integration services from a single solution provider rather than engaging with different partners,” says Desai.

The whole MS implementation was done by Ontrack even though Essel Propack bought licenses from some other partner. Essel Propack’s technological journey to the development and deployment of the communication and collaboration platform on an on-demand virtualized environment and its related infrastructure tools and practices was a good lesson learnt for the Ontrack Team. “Integration was our responsibility and the final outcome of ‘product and service’ business model was a good learning for us. The order value was more than 2x including services components, than the initial order size. But the benefits were multi-fold,” feels Desai. “It’s over six months since the project went live and there has not been a single complaint of downtime or related problem by mail users,” says an elated Golani.

The project proved to be special for Ontrack Solutions as Desai sums it up, “A routine hardware order was converted into an innovative ‘solution as a service’ resulting in huge ncost savings and scalable deployment for Essel Propack.” Wrapping Solution in a Service Pack
Towards the fag end of the implementation, Essel Propack faced the dilemma of not being able to buy the hardware components. Zoeb Adenwala, Global CIO, Essel Propack, explains, “We could not purchase the hardware and bill our subsidiaries (foreign locations) directly due to transfer pricing problems.” The customer requested Ontrack Solutions to invest and own the solution on its behalf. “If you are sure of the end results, then offer us ‘Solution as a Service’ to dispel any element of doubt, we told them,” he says.

Ontrack Solutions sensed an excellent opportunity to learn from this unique payment model. Naresh Desai, MD, Ontrack Solutions confirms, “When the whole deployment got crystallized, the customer did not show any interest to buy the hardware.” The solution provider purchased the entire equipment from IBM through a lease agreement with IBM Global Finance. The solution became unique as the entire solution is offered as ‘service’ to Essel Propack on per user basis, which is billed annually to the customer. Today, Ontrack sends individual bills to the various offices across the globe. Adenwala says, “We do not have a problem as the worldwide offices were now charged independently by a third party.”

Essel Propack is appreciative of the initiative taken by Ontrack. Adenwala reveals, “We tried other solution providers but they were quite skeptical about this business model. Ontrack was very helpful and positive since day one.” The ‘solution as a service’ model helped Essel Propack reduce capex and additionally optimize opex. Being an on-demand infrastructure, the customer pays for the services used.

“We took total ownership of the solution for four years. And as the system needs to be up and running at all times, if it is unavailable, we do not get paid,” says Desai. As more users at Essel Propack migrate on centralized mailing solution, our services revenues will increase, he says.

Turning the Tables

Mumbai-based Ontrack Solutions, the systems integration arm of Avnet, was one of the few solution providers that received an enquiry for quotation of the hardware infrastructure. Naresh Desai, MD, Ontrack Solutions, recalls, “The customer was looking at a plain MS Exchange operating on Windows OS on top of the blade architecture. They had a requirement of 16 blade servers, which later increased to 22. That was the intial bill of material from the customer.”

Right from the onset, Ontrack understood the business imperatives of the customer organization and translated it according to their needs. The solution provider sowed the seeds of virtualization to provide a competitive edge. The requirement of 22 blade servers meant two racks of space in the data center. “The conversion of physical infrastructure into a virtualized environment on VMware meant huge savings for customer,” says Sunil Golani, Chief Technology Evangelist, Ontrack Solutions.

Ontrack surely took a high risk by going the extra mile to display their value as solution provider to Essel Propack. “Approached at the eleventh hour by Essel, we decided to offer a value proposition than completing a traditional fulfillment order. The moment we gave an innovative approach, the competition was out,” says Golani.

A VMware virtualization on IBM blade center was finalized owing to reduced hardware investment, lower cost of hosting due to reduced number of servers, remotely manageable higher service levels, and better disaster recovery capabilities.

During the interaction with the Ontrack team, the virtualization concept resulting in just six servers reduced the rack space by half. Today, about 22 applications run across the same number of virtual servers over five physical blades, with one additional blade for redundancy and expansion. Adenwala reveals, “The capex of the infrastructure was reduced by about Rs 3 lakh when compared to the original physical blade server set up as the hardware was leased. The annual opex was reduced by over 30 percent because of lower cost of the data center through less power, less rack space, and a very minimal people management.”

Initial Jitters

Essel experienced some discomfort in implementing virtualization over MS Exchange 2007 since quite a few questions popped up. Would it run on a virtual environment? Would there be a difference in performance compared to a physical infrasturure? Will it be easier to manage? Will Microsoft support the collaboration suite on a virtualized platform? Ontrack addressed all their concerns by effectively displaying a better TCO to the customer. “Even if the virtualized deployment costed around 20 percent more than the physical infrastructure initially, the annual savings will yield the invested money back in two years. Moreover, backup becomes simplified,” adds Golani.

After getting acquainted with the advantages of virtualization, Essel wanted to conduct more reference checks on Microsoft Exchange 2007’s compatibility with a VMware virtualized environment. “MS Exchange 2003 has been successful with the virtualization technology. However, there is no concrete assertion by the vendor on their 2007 version. This further delayed their decision to adopt virtualization,” says Desai. To convince the customer, Ontrack connected them to referral customers who had implemented MS Exchange 2007. “We wanted the CIO to get the comfort feeling and establish the fact that MS Exchange 2007 runs fine over virtualization,” says Desai.

Also, most vendors did not give a strong affirmative reply on whether their product will work well with virtualization. “This further prompted our team to demonstrate an ROI study including a detailed spreadsheet analysis,” says Golani. More time was spent with vendors as every piece had to be integrated and compatible to avoid any pitfalls. The Essel team further cross- checked with a similar environment running at Chitale Farm, Pune, and a couple of other deployments. “After a positive feedback from the existing customers, Essel lost no time in deciding to go for virtualization,” says Golani.

Braving the Challenge

While most SIs would have chosen the easy path of fulfilling the hardware order of a dozen plus blade servers, being a VMware authorized partner, Ontrack took the virtualization challenge. “In the past, we have taken much higher risks backed by our domain knowledge for such projects. We had executed smaller but successful projects of running MS Exchange over virtual environments. So we were confident in this case too. I think we faced more challenges in pre-sales,” says Desai.

One of Essel’s biggest challenges was the final roll-out of the project. Ontrack’s team of engineers did a brilliant job of patiently instructing people at these locations over the phone for almost three months. “There was a need to reconfigure desktops and servers and joining them on address book, etc. They helped us,” says Adenwala.

In India, the system was up and running within 3 months. The time zone factor increased the deployment time for other locations. At present, 550 users across the main offices of India, US, UK, Poland, and China have migrated to a centralized mailing system. “We intend to add 150 more users by April this year across the remaining countries,” Adenwala adds.

Ontrack had been working with Essel for a couple of years in terms of hardware fulfillment orders, including a Citrix deployment. “The customer had to take our word for lot of things we said would work,” says a confident Desai. “Ontrack took a good risk, banking heavily on their technical know-how and implementation expertise. I am aware of their expertise as a solution provider as they were involved in serious and challenging projects during my stint at my previous firm,” says Adenwala.