Customer Solution Case Study
/ New challenge to make acreative and flexible organization
Overview
Country or Region:Korea
Industry:Telecommunications
Customer Profile
SK Telecom, which provides voice/data communications service, contents, applications and solutions, has been growing as the global ICT firm doing its global businesses in America, China, Malaysia, etc. beyond the domestic market.
Business Situation
It has initiated the 3-year planning of upgrade to the latest operating system with the desktop replacement cycle.
Solution
It has driven forward to the desktop virtualization for more flexible business environment while upgrading desktop. It plans to provide the Windows 7-based virtual machine as an enterprise-wide standard business environment in the future.
Benefits
- Seamless transition into virtualization
- Increased business flexibility
- Increased helpdesk efficiency
A manager in SK Telecom
There has been a spark of change in SK Telecom’s desktop environment! The company distributed desktops with Windows 7 and Office 2010 installed for users. This path for upgrade is not different from any other companies. However SK Telecom differentiated it from others! That is, SK Telecom initiated another challenge called desktop virtualization in the second half of 2011. It started the desktop enhancement, because it thought that not only improving business convenience, but also acquiring the flexibility, enabling its employees to do their tasks regardless of time and place and the devices including that of N-screen era, would be important. It selected Windows 7 and Office 2010 as a virtual machine-based standard business environment to provide consistent user experience to users regardless of devices they use such as notebook, tablet, PC, etc. and allow them to work productively.
Works the Way you Want
Situation
The change started to come over the SK Telecom’s corporate culture. The company is struggling to make the ‘flexibility’ to meet the value of new era rooted across its business environment, removing the way of work in the past industrial age. Out of these innovative activities, the desktop is the hottest part.
It wasn’t that long ago when SK Telecom’s desktop environment was almost same as that of other companies. One different thing is to provide notebooks for employees across the enterprise. However it started to show its own color since 2011. It was not differentiated from others until SK Telecom prepared the operating system (OS) upgrade in the end of 2009.
SK Telecom started to prepare the transition into the latest OS version in the end of 2009. It started to upgrade the OS and Office program after gaining compatibility. The company tried to ensure the compatibility of it with its internal systems and as a part of it, developed U.Key 2.0, its next-generation sales/customer management system, with compatibility in mind from the initial stage. U.Key 2.0 is the core system managing the communications service subscription and opening and customer information. Especially, since it is available to internal employees as well as agency users, the company made every effort to ensure the compatibility with the existing version and the latest version as well.
After completing the compatibility test for all businesses, SK Telecom started to distribute notebooks with the latest OS and Office programs installed. It decided to complete the replacement across the enterprise by 2013 and given its 3-year replacement cycle, it plans to do the upgrade for 3 years from 2011 to 2013.
SK Telecom initiated another innovative challenge while doing the gradual process of desktop replacement. It replaced 1/3 of desktops across the enterprise in 2011 and now has held the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure project in the second half of 2011. The reason for performing desktop upgrade and virtualization at the same time is to gain ‘flexibility.’
N-screen made SK Telecom pay attention to the flexibility in the desktop environment. The company found that N-screen has become a social phenomenon and its increased usage in its real business environment after distributing tablet PCs in batch across the enterprise in 2011.
After distributing devices, the company developed and provided the cloud service, which enables users to download and view business documents dynamically. What it provided is the SyncBoard, the document download service, InforBoard providing a variety of internal publications such as business manuals in the form of magazine, and TBizCatalog, the catalog provision service for customer consulting support.
While implementing the paperless office through these tablet PCs, SK Telecom felt the need of support for business consistency on a diverse screens when employees are working on notebooks and tablet PCs, and PCs at home as well.
Solution
SK Telecom thought it was inevitable to deliver the latest OS in addition to virtualization to provide consistent and efficient business environment which it had aimed at.
It judged that it is necessary to provide Windows 7 as the standard business environment in the desktop virtualization environment at the time the termination of its existing OS is approaching and the compatibility of the latest version of OS and its all business systems has been tested.
It is the case to the technological side. Reviewing the virtualization solutions from major companies, SK Telecom found that they could enjoy the strong points of the latest OS in the virtual environment as well, regardless of the solutions used in the line of infrastructure.
In addition, it distributed Office 2010 along with Windows 7 at the same time, which is to get the synergy with other parts. The company is operating TWorkspace, Enterprise Contents Management (ECM) for centralizing documents. TWorkspace was developed based on SharePoint Server and Windows 7 and Office 2010 is adding value on the ECM.
What they in SK Telecom noticed was the fact that search, the default function in OS, allows users to find and access easily to not only data within the desktop, but also information existed in the internal SharePoint Server environment. Office 2010 is also well compatible with SharePoint Server, which was expected to enable users to get document sharing and collaboration directly without multiple steps and it has turn out to be effective.
SK Telecom expects that it is able to deliver more diverse types of desktop to users in the virtualized desktop environment instead of delivering notebook with the range of standard specifications defined in the past. The company distributed the all-in-one PC for some users as of 2011. This model has big screen prepared to the notebook and has benefits of space efficiency and performance. SK Telecom evaluates that it would be able to offer more choice to users with their own business styles through distributing all-in-onePC.
Benefits
Seamless transition into virtualization
SK Telecom applied first the desktop virtualization for its IT department users, as of December, 2011. Users in this department are calling and using Windows 7-based virtual desktop image when working on their Windows XP-based notebook.
A manager in SK Telecom said, “We separated clearly the user environment and business environment to prevent local PCs from access to the internal system from the firewall stage.” He said, “We have to call up Windows 7-based virtual desktop to do our work, but it is not inconvenient to use the system, because it is pre-tested.”
He also said, “We have to call the Windows 7 on our existing environment, not the recent notebook, but we don’t feel any inconvenience. As of the end of 2011, in case of IT department, there are no kinks in doing works regardless of notebook and tablet PC.”
Increased business flexibility
SK Telecom has introduced partially the flexible workplace as a part of acquiring ‘flexibility’ emphasized by the entire group. The company allows employees to choose the working hours to meet to the nature of their work to increase creativity, breaking the framework of formal standard business hour of 9:00 am~ 6:00 pm.
SK Telecom is going to be a reference model in realizing this commitment across the group. Its business flexibility is expected to be spread out to the entire enterprise. This is because once they have been able to call their business OS dynamically regardless of time, space and devices through the desktop virtualization after implementing mobile office through the tablet PC, more flexible business will be possible. A manager in SK Telecom said, “A variety of idea about flexible workplace will come out as soon as the foundation called desktop virtualization has been established.”
Increased user productivity
While conducting enterprise-wide desktop upgrade, IT department in SK Telecom, which was first using Windows 7 and Office 2010 on the virtualization foundation, saw the significantly increased productivity with only OS upgrade.
A manager in SK Telecom said, “Users can know the fact that Windows 7 is user friendly as soon as they have used. As for me, the fact that when I use the snap function to drag windows in working with multiple windows opened, they were sorted neatly was good.” SK Telecom is distributing Internet Explorer 8 as the basic browser as of the end of 2011 and it expects that the browsing convenience will be increased through the task bar fix function as soon as the version 9 is going to be distributed in the future.
Increased helpdesk operation efficiency
SK Telecom expects the transition into the Windows7 will make the operation and management of desktop infrastructure easy. Unlike its existing version, it provides the enhanced centralized control through the PowerShell.
The rapid recovery from the serious failures was also possible. SK Telecom provided the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP)’s Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) training to its helpdesk staff regarding to the introduction of Windows 7. In the past, helpdesk had spent a lot of time and effort to recover files stored in the system in failure like booting fault. It is now possible to solve it simply using DaRT. Therefore if using a notebook with Windows7 installed, user’s inadvertent booting failure can be also recovered by the rapid recovery service of helpdesk.
Windows 7
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Works the Way you Want