Challenges
Our client, a leasing subsidiary of a banking group, has a dedicated infrastructure that respects the group’s standards. It addresses all the needs for the activities located in France and in Europe. The current organization ensures the N1, N2 and N3 levels on all the components of its infrastructures (systems, networks, storage/archiving, VDI, security…). For a long time, it managed level 3 in silo mode, with experts assigned to a particular domain.
With the arrival of the private cloud made available by the group and the move to cloud projects that follow on from it, the evolution of the N3 to give it a greater capacity to structure current expertise according to changing needs has become an imperative, as has the support of the N3 teams in taking the cloud into account. The decision was made to entrust the entire level 3 to a partner.
Transforming our teams in charge of level 3 in such a short time was a risky bet, but you were able to meet the challenge by overcoming all the difficulties.
Strategy Committee | Client Banking
A carefully orchestrated ramp-up
First, we structured the team to maintain the level of expertise but above all to be able to ensure transitions with new members. One of the levers to achieve this transformation while controlling costs was to rely on our Service Center located in Porto. This service center has won over the client, who is asking us to transfer more and more N3 activity to it.
Secondly, we brought in Cloud and Move To Cloud experts from teams that had been involved in setting up European Cloud Providers. These teams had the mission to appropriate the resources related to the private cloud set up by the group and to develop training/coaching and certification programs specific to the areas that the customer entrusted to us.
4000
Requests for expertise handled per year
8/10
Average customer satisfaction score
80%
of requests processed within the deadline
18
Level 3 System & Cloud experts mobilized
Transformation steps
During the scope recovery, we focused on the client’s core scopes:
- Linux (Red Hat), Windows Server and AIX system architectures;
- Virtualized architectures (VMWare, Citrix);
- Storage and archiving;
- Networks and security (datacenter networks, firewall, DNS, Fortinet…);
- Access management (IAM);
- Monitoring tools.
Within these areas, the expertise and scope of interventions were identified and structured in order to be able to transfer knowledge more easily to new team members.
Once the inventory phase was completed, we gradually transferred expertise to our teams in Portugal, maintaining a two-man team for several weeks.
In order to prepare for the arrival of the private cloud, we have assigned employees:
- To take over the training tools made available by the group in order to create a training/certification kit specific to the areas for which we are responsible;
- To coach the N3 teams on the components of the private cloud that will gradually enter their perimeters following the training;
- To prepare the automation with specific orchestrators of a set of tasks.
Transformation support
We have an internal Cloud & DevOps practice whose mission is to support our employees in ATU or in service centers in their challenges related to the Cloud or DevOps. This involves the use of support experts, resources made available by Consort France (sandboxes, etc.) or software publishers. In the present context, our level 3 teams have been able to benefit from this support in the form of personalized coaching.
Concerning the structuring of the activities, we relied on our ISO 9001, 20000-1 and 27001 certified know-how, making it possible to quickly transfer the activity to Porto.
For the Cloud part, we appointed specific people, transversal to the team and in charge of making the link with the right interlocutors within the banking organization.
Ensuring the availability of expertise
Level 3 profiles represent the experts on production environments. Their training and the evolution of their skills is key for all of our customers, particularly in service center mode. We have developed within our Cloud and DevOps practices an individualized follow-up of our consultants (evolution and maintenance of skills) allowing us a specific accompaniment and a predictive management of the evolutions and needs.
Prepare and accompany the Move to Cloud
We mobilize specific resources to carry out an “audit” of the resources available, an analysis of possible architectures and the impact on the recurring activities of our N3 teams. These resources provide a link between our customers’ solutions and the activities delivered by our level 3 experts
Innovate in a DevOps spirit
The implementation of a DevOps model is often long because it is disruptive. All service evolutions need to take into account the work already done. The Cloud and DevOps practice ensures a role of monitoring and identifying innovations. We focus on proposing transformations and innovations that bring value while respecting existing AGILE models.
Provide Cloud expertise
The cloud brings flexibility and new potential. But it adds new technological bricks that are often complex to integrate into the IT department’s processes. We focus on targeting the technologies in the cloud environment that impact the perimeters of our teams and we support our client and our teams in integrating these new features into existing management processes.
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