Scottish and Southern Energy is one of the UK’s largest utilities
services companies in the UK. It is involved in the generation,
transmission, distribution and supply of electricity; energy trading;
the storage, distribution and supply of gas; electrical and utility
contracting and telecoms throughout the UK. With 300 Citrix servers
managed in different farms and builds, coupled with a plethora of
applications, Scottish and Southern Energy needed a solution to aid the
complicated management of deploying new servers across the company’s 150
sites in the UK.
Before deciding upon a single solution, Scottish and Southern Energy
explored a number of other suppliers. RES Software and Visionapp were
highlighted as the companies whose products were able to meet Scottish
and Southern Energy’s requirements for server deployment and application
delivery, but the differentiating factor was the ability of RES
Automation Manager to produce instant comparative reports on the state
of the servers and the estate as a whole. Flexibility was also critical
in Scottish and Southern Energy’s choice of provider. The purpose of
implementing a software solution was to achieve a uniform set-up across
the organization, ensuring the smooth and rapid roll-out of
applications. Automation Manager’s integration with both Citrix and
Microsoft SoftGrid (formerly Softricity) aids the flexibility of
projects, modules, queries and tasks.
Scottish and Southern Energy found that through the implementation of
Automation Manager, not only did it benefit from an increase in
productivity due to a decrease in the time spent solving problems and
activating new applications, but also gained a broader base from which
it is able to deploy developments. The ease of transferring the system
from the test laboratory to full-scale commercial roll-out was rapid and
intuitive. Using the unique Automation Manager building blocks, 300
servers were updated in 30 minutes.
Going forward, Scottish and Southern Energy aim to continue updating its system as new applications are developed.
