Mounir Khaldi, IT System and Support Manager, Wataniya Telecom Algerie- Nedjma

“In two months, we were able to go from
50 percent systems availability to 99.99 percent systems availability, thanks to Premier Support.”

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Document published March 2010

Business Needs

Under the brand name Nedjma, Wataniya Telecom started its Algerian operation in 2004. Looking to grow its market share, Nedjma undertook rapid growth, resulting in an increasingly complex IT environment.

To support this environment, the company devoted individual experts to each product or technology it had in place, but such a strategy proved difficult to scale. “We had an advisor on our team dedicated to Active Directory services and Microsoft Exchange Server. He was the sole person who would stay late at night to solve any problems we had,” says Mounir Khaldi, IT System and Support Manager for Wataniya Telecom.“Then, when we started to implement other solutions, we realized we couldn’t continue to dedicate experts to each solution.”

During this time of growth, Wataniya Telecom’s infrastructure and the accompanying support demands surged and reached a peak. As a result of increased demand, sizing issues across system partitions and logs, andtroubles with the hardware and network,systems availability hit a temporary low of 50 percent for a period of two months. Because of these issues, IT leaders decided to look for a more comprehensive IT support strategy that would help them quickly maximize availability and move their IT operations forward as the company continued to grow.

Solution

To support its IT environment and improve systems availability, IT leadership at Nedjma turned to Microsoft Services Premier Support. “We chose Premier Support because from the onset of our business, it has always been in our strategy to work closely with Microsoft, especially when adopting new solutions,” explains Khaldi. “And, we felt that Premier Support could help support us with the rising infrastructure demands we were facing while helping us maintain the high quality of our services.”

Working with a Technical
Account Manager

Khaldi and his team have found the service management component of Premier Support to be particularly effective and a key part of the company’s strategy of building a closer relationship with Microsoft and driving efforts for moving to a proactive model of IT management. In this process, the company works with a technical account manager (TAM) who learnsboth the business and IT sides of the organization and their challenges. The TAM then coordinates efforts with Microsoft, which can include a range of IT environment assessments and remediation projects to resolve issues and improve overall IT performance and health. Says Khaldi, “After helping our TAM develop an understanding of our needs, we set expectations for what we wanted to get from Premier Support. Since then, the TAM has helped us choose the best solutions for our IT projects. We feel that we have really developed a partnership—rather than a provider-client relationship—with Microsoft.”

Changing to a Proactive Approach to IT Management—Moving IT from a Cost Center to a Strategic Asset

According to Khaldi, the most critical function of Premier Support has been its proactive support services. By reviewing IT infrastructure and optimizing technology and the surrounding processes, Wataniya Telecom can remediateissues before they become incidents. For example, by taking advantage of the proactive components of Premier Support, the Nedjma IT team was able to adopt the Microsoft Operations Framework and IT Infrastructure Library approaches for IT management, operations, and development.

As part of the proactive services of Premier Support, the company has also engaged in a range of Health Check and Risk Assessment Programs to resolve issues before they lead to larger problems or critical incidents. Although the company has engaged in a number of such programs, Khaldi notes three primary benefits: helping the company maintain and improve the availability of its messaging services, instilling the right Microsoft Operations Framework solutions and processes surrounding patch management, and improving the overall security of IT infrastructure.

The company has also taken advantage of a range of workshops and training programs available through Premier Support. “Compared to what we could get elsewhere, the Premier Support workshops are much more objective and to the point,” notes Khaldi. “They are aligned with our business and have helped build the competence of our team.”

Rolling Out New Solutions

By working with its TAM, the company has initiated a range of IT initiatives through Premier Support, including the deployment of the Active Directory service, an upgrade from Exchange Server 2003 to Exchange Server 2007, and more. Says Khaldi, “Whenever we launch a new project, the first organization that we ask for advice from is Microsoft, because the company is very knowledgeable about our infrastructure and can answer all of the questions we have.” Most recently, the Nedjma IT team has worked with Microsoft Services to implement the company’s LDAP service and to develop an interface between the company’s billing service and a range of other applications.

Benefits

Since engaging Premier Support in 2004, Nedjma has continued to face landmark changes to its business and IT environment. Still a relatively new telco provider in Algeria, the company now enjoys more than 8 million customersand annual revenue of KD141.4 million (U.S.$497.1 million) in 2009.Says Khaldi, “Premier Support has been an important foundation for our business and an important part of our strategy, helping us become a leader in our industry.”

Reduce Incidents 77.8 Percent Over Three Years, 94.5 Percent Over Four

In Nedjma’s first year with Premier Support, the company experienced 18 incidents. Three years later, the number declined to only four—a 77.8 percent reduction. In its fourth year with Premier Support, the Nedjma IT team has only experienced one incident; if this trend continues throughout the remainder of the year, it will result in a 94.5 percent reduction in incidents over four years.

Improve Systems Availability

After reaching a low of 50 percent in its systems availability, Nedjma experienced a complete turn around only two months after taking advantage of Premier Support to achieve a systems availability of 99.99 percent. “It is very important for the maturation of the IT organization and for the availability of the IT systems that the IT organization take advantage of Premier Support,” says Khaldi. “We are now able to offer high-quality services and maintain business continuity.”

Lower IT Costs

Although Khaldi cannot associate a comprehensive cost savings to the overall benefits of Premier Support, he notes that those savings are significant. “To be more objective, we now have SLAs in place,” he explains. “And, what we are finding through those SLAs is that our service quality is continuing to improve without us investing more.”