Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Global Manufacturer Upgrades Nearly 11,000 Desktops in Five Weeks
Overview
Country:United States
Industry:Manufacturing
Customer Profile
Founded in 1920 and headquartered in Kingsport, Tennessee, Eastman Chemical Company is a Fortune 500 company that manufactures and markets chemicals, fibers, and plastics worldwide. The company had 2005 sales of U.S.$7 billion and employs approximately 12,000 people.
Business Situation
When Eastman upgraded to Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003, it wanted to maximize server consolidation as well as the security benefits of that upgrade for desktop users. It also wanted to improve compliance with its records retention policy.
Solution
The company deployed Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 to 10,900 desktop and notebook computers throughout its global organization.
Benefits
Efficient deployment
Increased security
Broader support for applications
48 percent reduction in mail servers / “The cost of upgrading to Office Professional Edition 2003 was justified by the mail server consolidation savings. The new functionality and improved user interface and security just add to that value.”
Cath Evans, Associate Systems Architect for the Windows Platform, Eastman Chemical Company
As a leading global manufacturer of a diverse group of chemicals, fibers, and plastic products, Eastman Chemical Company relies heavily on technology to maintain quality and cost efficiency. When the company upgraded to Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 in late 2004 to consolidate servers and enhance security, it decided to further maximize those benefits by upgrading its global desktop image to include Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003. Using the Microsoft Office 2003 Resource Kit, Eastman took just a week to create the update package and used Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 to distribute the result to 10,900 global users in five weeks without hampering network performance. Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 contributed to a 48 percent consolidation in mail servers, which justified the cost of deploying the upgrade. In addition, Microsoft Office InfoPath® 2003 helped Eastman automate its records management system.
Situation
With more than 12,000 employees located at multiple sites around the globe, Eastman Chemical Company develops, manufactures, and markets more than 1,200 chemicals, fibers, and plastic products used in thousands of consumer goods. Eastman products keep paints and coatings from cracking, help produce safer medical equipment film, and are used in packaging that extends the shelf life of many foods. The list is long and diverse and continues to grow as the company develops new products and applications.
Headquartered in Kingsport, Tennessee, the company’s computing infrastructure consists of a wide area network (WAN) running on the Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 operating system, which is the foundation of Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software, and the Microsoft Windows® 2000 Server operating system. Most Eastman sites have a local area network (LAN) and site IT contact, but all desktops are managed and maintained centrally from headquarters by a three-member staff dedicated to the desktop, supplemented by four other technicians who split their time between desktop and server application maintenance and distribution.
Eastman has established a standard image for all desktop and notebook computers, which includes the operating system, Microsoft Office programs, utilities, and line-of-business application clients. Individual business units may install additional applications related to a specific function, such as engineering, research, or manufacturing. Each user is equipped with a company desktop or notebook computer preloaded with the standard image. Approximately 2,500 employees outside the United States access the Eastman network through the global WAN, as do approximately 100 marketing account executives throughout North America who work out of their homes. All Eastman employees can access e-mail from their home computers through Microsoft Office Outlook® Web Access.
In late 2004, the company’s 10,900 desktop and notebook computers were running the Microsoft Windows XP Professional operating system and Microsoft Office XP Professional. At that time, Eastman was about to upgrade from Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server to Exchange Server 2003. The company was also in the process of developing an automated records management system to better support its records retention policies.
Because Eastman maintains a relatively lean IT department, it uses a standard methodology for all server and desktop updates. Software updates and new product deployments are scheduled as part of regular maintenance operations rather than as special projects.
“We keep our desktop image current because it lets us take advantage of the latest technologies to enhance our internal processes,” says Cath Evans, Associate Systems Architect for the Windows Platform at Eastman. “We schedule software updates into our regular course of business, treating them as items on our to-do list so that we can get updates done as we have the resources available.”
Solution
Toward the end of 2004, as Eastman was about to embark on its Exchange Server 2003 upgrade, the IT department decided to upgrade all of its desktop and notebook computers to Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 to gain the enhanced security and spam-blocking features in the Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 messaging and collaboration client. These features, together with enhanced features in Exchange Server 2003 (part of Windows Server System), would help safeguard users from unwanted or malicious e-mail. In addition, Outlook 2003 would help Eastman get the full benefit of Exchange Server 2003 server consolidation by enabling the company to take advantage of the Cached Exchange Mode to cache the user’s mailbox and offline address book to the local computer.
“The Outlook 2003 client includes several features that work with Exchange Server 2003 to reduce network bandwidth requirements and eliminate the majority of our Exchange Server infrastructure outside the corporate data center,” says John Steven Jones, Systems Analyst for Eastman.
The company also took advantage of the Microsoft Office InfoPath® 2003 information-gathering program to develop an automated records management system, which makes it easier for employees to comply with Eastman’s internal records management policy. The system will scan for files and e-mail items that are older than the user-established timeframe and display them for the user to review and save or discard.
Planning the Deployment
Because Eastman has an established methodology for software updates and new product deployments, it applied that methodology to the Office Professional Edition 2003 deployment, virtually eliminating planning time. The deployment process consists of:
Testing software programs with representatives from every organization and site.
Running a pilot deployment to the IT department.
Deploying the final image to Eastman desktops on a region-by-region basis around the world.
Before deployment, the Eastman deployment group got an accurate inventory of hardware assets by using Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 (another Windows Server System component) and a scanning tool developed in-house.
Building and Testing the Update
Eastman built a standard desktop and a standard notebook image to be used throughout the enterprise. The image included Windows XP Service Pack 2, Office Professional Edition 2003, McAfee Anti-Virus, an SAP client, and other utility software. “Any software that is required by 80 percent of our users is included in the standard image,” says Evans. Additional software related to a specific business unit, such as engineering, research, or manufacturing is added by the support team for that business unit.
Jones used the Microsoft Office 2003 Resource Kit extensively to configure each program in the Microsoft Office System. It took Jones about a week to study the new capabilities and configure all of the Office programs.
A group of about 200 people representing every Eastman organization and site worldwide tested the Office Professional Edition upgrade. “We use a standard list of testers who understand the implications of the software update to their organization far better than those of us in the IT department,” says Evans.
The Eastman IT group sent testers an e-mail message with a link to the Office Professional Edition 2003 installation package. Members of the test group clicked the link to download and install the software on their local PCs and then, during their regular course of business, they tested the software for general productivity as well as for compatibility with other applications.
The testers worked with Office Professional Edition 2003 for about three months and sent feedback to Jones. Testing revealed a few issues that needed to be addressed before deployment but nothing major. Perhaps the most significant issue involved a manufacturing application that integrated with the Microsoft Office Excel®2003 spreadsheet software. Several of the macros written to integrate that application with Excel 2002 needed to be rewritten for Excel 2003. In addition, some users had a problem sharing calendars in Outlook 2003. That problem was resolved when Eastman upgraded to Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2.
Deployment
When the testing was complete and the few minor issues were resolved, the Office Professional Edition 2003 deployment group ran one final pilot test of software distribution, by deploying the final upgrade configuration to a group of approximately 300 IT staff at Eastman.
About three weeks before the Office Professional Edition 2003 upgrade was deployed in production, the Microsoft Mid-American sales organization presented a three-day “Microsoft Days” event to familiarize Eastman employees with new features and functionality in the Microsoft Office System. The Microsoft group demonstrated 90 tips and tricks for Office Professional Edition 2003 to about 1,700 people at Eastman’s Kingsport headquarters as well as to thousands of other employees around the world, simultaneously through Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
“Close to one-third of our employees attended this presentation so that when we sent them the e-mail with the link to the Office Professional Edition 2003 upgrade, they were anxious to install it,” says Evans.
Eastman took advantage of the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) in Systems Management Server 2003 to transfer files in a throttled mode. This method copied the SMS package file to the desktop behind the scenes using any available bandwidth so it didn’t put a major load on the network. The files are “trickled” down to the desktop over a period of days. “Because we’re a global company, our users need the network to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all over the world,” says Evans. “We have a very narrow maintenance window and we could not deploy the Office Professional Edition 2003 package within that window.”
Eastman deployed Office Professional Edition 2003 in three phases, starting with the Kingsport headquarters. “We started deployment in Kingsport because if we encountered trouble, we could get to those machines quickly and fix the problem before the rest of the deployments,” says Jones. As with the users in the pilot test, the group sent an e-mail, which included a link to the software upgrade, to all users at the target site. Users had a choice of clicking the link to install the upgrade themselves, or waiting a few weeks and having it automatically pushed to their computers. “As we got ready to start the push to a site, we sent the same e-mail to the next site. We staggered the push from a week to two weeks between each site,” says Jones.
The excitement created by the Microsoft Days event generated a high response rate. More than 20 percent of users clicked the e-mail link to install the package. The package uninstalled Office XP first and then installed Office Professional Edition 2003 Service Pack 1. The installation averaged about 30 minutes per desktop.
No additional training was required beyond what was provided by the Microsoft Days sessions. Eastman published the tips and tricks handouts to an internal Web site, where users could access it if needed.
About a week after the Kingsport site received the update, the same message was sent to the rest of Eastman’s North American users, then to Latin America, Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Deployments started in the middle of March 2005 and were completed by the third week of April 2005.
Benefits
New capabilities in Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 and in tools such as the Office 2003 Resource Kit and SMS 2003 enabled the Eastman IT staff to quickly configure Office Professional Edition 2003 and deploy it as part of the company’s regular update process with little or no disruption to users. Outlook 2003, in combination with Exchange Server 2003, also helped reduce network load and supported server consolidation. In addition, InfoPath 2003 functionality supported Eastman’s automated records management project.
Efficient Deployment
The ability to transfer a large software image in the background to desktop computers through Systems Management Server 2003 enabled Eastman to deliver the upgrade in about 30 minutes per desktop. “The work we’ve done with our security and antivirus updates has made the update process a normal part of our users’ business routine,” says Evans. “Because of that, we have the processes in place behind the scenes to let even a major upgrade like Office Professional Edition 2003 run through our normal business practices rather than as a special project.”
In addition, the ability to send a compressed image to the user’s local hard disk minimizes network impact and expedites installation. “Triggering the SMS package to do the actual installation at the desktop is very efficient for updates because we’re not limited by WAN or LAN performance,” says Jones. “We were able to use Local Installation Source to keep the Office Professional Edition source files on the local hard disk so that they are available to a user to repair or reinstall the programs even when they are offline.” Additional updates are applied to the local installation of Office Professional Edition 2003 so that an up-to-date local source is always available. Because only compressed .cab files are downloaded and extracted locally, installation time is reduced to an average of 30 minutes per computer user, compared to 60 minutes if the upgrade is installed over the network.
Increased Security
New security features in Outlook 2003 work together with Exchange Server 2003 to isolate suspect e-mail and enable users to quickly dispose of unsolicited e-mail without opening the message. This helps Eastman minimize the time required for users to deal with unwanted content and reduces the risk of malicious messages affecting the network. In addition, the increased consistency between the full Outlook 2003 client and Outlook Web Access also makes it easier for Eastman employees to access e-mail when out of the office.
“The cost of upgrading to Office Professional Edition 2003 was justified by the mail server consolidation savings,” says Evans. “The new functionality and improved user interface and security just add to that value.”
Broader Support for Applications
Expanded XML support in Office Professional Edition 2003 increased Eastman’s ability to integrate Office programs with its back-end systems. Although one manufacturing application required that several Excel macros be rewritten, Office Professional Edition 2003 integrated well with the rest of Eastman’s systems. “The deployment was a non-event in terms of requiring additional infrastructure development time,” says Jones.
With the deployment of InfoPath 2003 as part of the upgrade, Eastman was also able to automate its records management system. Users no longer have to manually search hard disks and file shares for old items to delete; the automated system based on InfoPath automatically displays old items for the user to review and retain or delete.
Forty-Eight Percent Reduction
in Mail Servers
Because Eastman uses Outlook 2003 with Exchange Server 2003, the user’s mailbox and offline address book are cached on the local computer. This reduces both the number of roundtrips and the amount of data transferred between client and server during synchronization, thus reducing server and network workload.
As a result, Eastman was able to cut the number of servers running Exchange Server 2003 almost in half. “The combination of new features in Outlook 2003 and Exchange Server 2003 allowed us to remove many of our regional Exchange Server–based servers and pull the e-mail functionality back to headquarters,” says Jones. “We were able to cut the number of mail servers from 21 with Exchange 2000 Server to 11 with Exchange Server 2003. That allowed us to repurpose those servers and reduced management time.”
Eastman will deploy Office Professional Edition 2003 Service Pack 2 in early 2006 to increase security and to resolve calendar access delegation issues. The upgrade process used to deploy Office Professional Edition 2003 will be repeated when Eastman deploys the service pack.
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