Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Technology Service Firm Helps Steel Company Gain Reliable, Manageable Systems
Overview
Country or Region:Belgium
Industry:Professional services
Customer Profile
Headquartered in Paris, Capgemini provides IT consulting, technology and outsourcing services. The company has more than 60,000 employees and reported 2004 global revenue of €6.3 billion (U.S.$8.5 billion).
Business Situation
Arcelor Ghent wanted to more closely monitor its automated and integrated business processes. It needed information gleaned from the monitoring to make the processes faster and more efficient.
Solution
Capgemini applied the latest enhancements to the Business Activity Monitoring component of Microsoft® BizTalk® Server 2006 to monitor Arcelor Ghent business-critical processes and related messages in real time.
Benefits
Simpler IT management for improved reliability
Faster, more-automated processes
Latest technology with managed risk
Path for future opportunities
Partnership that maximizes resources / “We see Capgemini as part of our group, not as subcontractors. Together with Microsoft, we will deploy Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 to gain reliable, manageable systems that support our growth.”
Pieter Moors, Technologies and Standards Manager, Arcelor Ghent
A leading IT and professional services company, Capgemini is a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner that helps customers resolve complex technology issues. In 2004, Capgemini worked with Arcelor Ghent, a major steel manufacturer, to integrate and automate business processes. In 2005, while reaping the benefits of that solution, Arcelor Ghent identified a need to more closely monitor the messages (data) that its IT applications and systems exchange. Capgemini developed a pilot project to implement a message-monitoring solution based on Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2006. As a member of the Microsoft Technology Adoption Program, Capgemini had access to a prerelease version of this software. The solution provides information that Arcelor Ghent can use to make its business processes run faster and more efficiently, resulting in a more reliable IT environment that’s simpler to manage.
Situation
Capgemini provides IT consulting, technology, outsourcing, and local professional services to top companies in automotive, energy, chemical, healthcare, financial service, and other sectors. Founded in 1967 and based in Paris, Capgemini employs approximately 60,000 people in more than 30 countries worldwide. With its Collaborative Business Experience methodology, Capgemini helps customers achieve better, faster, and more- sustainable results by targeting value, mitigating risk, and aligning its organization to its customers.
Capgemini is a long-time trusted advisor to Arcelor Ghent (formerly SIDMAR), based in Ghent, Belgium, a unit of Arcelor SA, the second largest steel producer in the world. In 2004, in partnership with Microsoft® Services consultants and HP, Capgemini helped Arcelor Ghent automate and integrate its internal business processes using a solution based on Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2004 and built on the Microsoft .NET Framework. The solution was part of a strategy to move Arcelor Ghent toward a service-oriented architecture. Benefits of the solution included increasing the availability and reliability of production processes, automating sales invoicing, and greatly expanding process monitoring. More precisely, the solution provided a new mission-critical messaging infrastructure in support of these business processes.
Arcelor Ghent needs to closely monitor the messages (data) that its IT applications and systems exchange with each other to complete a task. “For example, our systems can send messages to a company that processes customer bills, or they can exchange messages to provide production information to our Arcelor affiliates,” explains Pieter Moors, Technologies and Standards Manager at Arcelor Ghent. “These are critical business processes that need to be monitored carefully.”
In early 2005, Arcelor Ghent identified a need for more visibility into its business processes, many of which run on disparate systems and in multiple operating environments. Specifically, it needed to manage its messaging infrastructure more efficiently and robustly. “In the context of business processes, it is very important to know where messages are at a given moment,” says Moors. By knowing where a message is (how far along it is within its process) and by examining the message’s state and contents, system administrators gain valuable insight into how well the process is working. They can then use the information to improve the process—to make it faster, more efficient, and more automated. The goal of Arcelor Ghent was to monitor and then apply improvements to processes generally, resulting in more cost-effective business operations.
Solution
A Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and a member of the Microsoft Technology Adoption Program, Capgemini has a deep knowledge of emerging Microsoft technologies. It keeps up with the latest advancements in Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software, including BizTalk Server. Capgemini had solid reasons for making BizTalk Server 2006 the central component of a solution for Arcelor Ghent:
Enhanced Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 allows real-time monitoring of business processes and of critical business performance metrics from within a user-friendly Excel®spreadsheet software environment or an out-of-box portal.
As an object-oriented tool, BizTalk Server 2006 lets developers define reusable integration components and artifacts. By sharing and reusing these among applications, developers save time and labor and simplify the management of their service-oriented architecture.
This latest edition continues and expands the mission of BizTalk Server to integrate multiple business processes that affect multiple systems, even when the processes run in different operating environments.
Capgemini chose Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005, with its vast data storage and fast retrieval abilities, to work in combination with BizTalk Server 2006 to monitor and store message activity. The Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005 development system was used to author the necessary connection components and interface elements. Using these three Microsoft products, the Capgemini solution tracked each message throughout its lifetime and stored the tracking information in database records. IT administrators could retrieve message records for later analysis. They could also use the solution to intercept, examine, and return a message to its host process, in real time.
In mid-2005, when Capgemini developed the solution, all three Microsoft products were prerelease (beta) versions, so the solution would not have been appropriate for enterprise-wide deployment. Instead, the company applied the solution to a pilot project to monitor only the processes that translate a customer’s commercial specifications into technical specifications for product manufacturing.
With Capgemini, technology is only one part of any solution; another part is collaboration. “We are very happy in our partnership with Arcelor Ghent,” says Johan Vanmarcke, Practice Manager for Development and Integration at Capgemini. “Our company is very familiar with the Arcelor environment, both from a technology and a business point of view.”
Pieter Moors agrees. “It’s the cooperation,” Moors adds. “We are partners in the same house. We see Capgemini as part of our group, not as subcontractors. Together with Microsoft, we will deploy Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 to gain reliable, manageable systems that support our growth.”
Having collaborated closely with Capgemini during the pilot project, Arcelor Ghent was pleased not only with the solution, but also with the spirit of trust and cooperation that the two companies had developed.
Benefits
The Capgemini Collaborative Business Experience helps customers achieve better, faster, and more-sustainable results. For Arcelor Ghent, collaboration has produced a solution that improves process automation, monitoring, and speed, resulting in a more reliable IT environment that’s simpler to manage. Arcelor Ghent also gains access to the latest technology while minimizing the risks of new software deployment and strengthening beneficial partnerships based on trust.
SimplerIT Management for Improved Reliability
The enhanced BAM features in BizTalk Server 2006 support real-time monitoring—in one place—of multiple processes running in multiple environments. “With BizTalk Server, our IT managers have one tool to monitor all processes, which is so much more efficient than making them examine several systems before they can come to a conclusion,” says Moors. “This solution will make our IT environment better, more reliable.”
Faster, More-Automated Business Processes
Because both Arcelor Ghent and Capgemini are members of the Technology Adoption Program, they can take advantage of the latest advancements from Microsoft. But Arcelor Ghent doesn’t embrace technology just because it’s new; its goal is to become more competitive. By monitoring processes closely, Arcelor Ghent gains the information it needs to make it better. “With this solution, we can make processes that run faster,” explains Moors. “Not only faster, but also in a more automated way,” adds Vanmarcke.
Latest Technology With Managed Risk
In early 2005, Capgemini and Arcelor Ghent were so impressed with the enhanced features of BizTalk Server 2006 that they decided to adopt it immediately. In their situation, using beta software made better business sense than expending resources to customize the previous version of BizTalk Server. However, new technology can bring new risks. System administrators must allow sufficient time to adjust and optimize any system affected by a software upgrade. With expert guidance from Capgemini, Arcelor Ghent scheduled a strategic incremental deployment of its message-monitoring solution, including a carefully defined pilot project, to minimize disruption. “Managing these technologies is as important as using them,” Moors explains. “With Capgemini, the risk is much more controlled because we understand each other, and we know the exact scope in which we can work together.”
Path for Future Opportunities
Arcelor Ghent is looking forward to using more of the new features of BizTalk Server 2006 and deploying them on a scale much larger than that of the pilot project. For example, the company hopes to benefit from:
Simplified application management, which reduces total cost of ownership.
Improved large-message transformation capabilities.
Easier development when working with flat files.
Support for Microsoft Virtual Server 2005.
BAM alerting and notification when user-defined thresholds are reached by real-time system data.
With the experience of the pilot project and with the ongoing expertise that Capgemini provides, Arcelor Ghent is now free to consider many solution possibilities that will make it a more competitive manufacturer.
Partnership That Maximizes Resources
By aligning its organization to that of its customer, Capgemini makes efficient use of both companies’ resources. “Arcelor Ghent trusts us,” Vanmarcke says. “It trusts what we’re doing because we’re committed to that company, and we’re focused on its needs. That’s the best way to work.” Arcelor Ghent understands its business processes better than anyone else does. Capgemini has expertise in IT solutions, including a thorough knowledge of Microsoft products. HP offers reliable server computer hardware. AndMicrosoft produces the software that makes all the solutions possible.
Optimizing the capabilities of each party minimizes waste and reduces cost. “Taking the best of the customer, the best of Capgemini, and the best of technology produces the best possible outcome,” explains Ronni Edens, Global Marketing Manager for the Capgemini Microsoft Alliance Team. “That’s why optimizing each party’s capabilities is so important. Every customer experience is a business value story, a partnering story, a collaboration story. You don’t hire us to work for you, but rather we work with you and we collaborate with your company.”
Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006
Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006, part of Windows Server System, empowers businesses to more efficiently build, manage, and optimize mission-critical business process automation solutions spanning applications, people, and organizations. BizTalk Server 2006 delivers unique, integrated tools to IT professionals, developers, and business analysts that help reduce complexity and achieve new levels of agility in business process design and optimization. With enhanced and simplified deployment, configuration, and management capabilities and a smooth upgrade experience from BizTalk Server 2004, BizTalk Server 2006 is comprehensive, integrated software that helps organizations manage the next generation of adaptive business process automation solutions.
For more information about BizTalk Server 2006, go to:
Microsoft Windows Server System
Microsoft Windows Server System is a line of integrated and manageable server software designed to reduce the complexity and cost of IT. Windows Server System enables you to spend less time and budget on managing your systems so that you can focus your resources on other priorities for you and your business.
For more information about Windows Server System, go to: