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| Using InstallPump, Dominion Completes Large Scale Notes Migration |
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For immediate release:
SoftQuest Corporation
One Selleck Street
Norwalk, Ct 06855
Phone : 203-866-2126
Fax: 203-866-2127
URL www.installpump.com
About Dominion:
Dominion is one of the nation's largest producers of energy, with a production capability of 2.7 trillion BTUs of energy per day. Dominion has the largest BTU production capability among integrated utilities in the northeast quadrant of the United States. Dominion offers more than 21,000 megawatts in its generation portfolio of efficient electric power transmitted over 6,000 miles of transmission lines, and is expected to grow to more than 28,000 megawatts by 2005. Gas customers are served by 7,600 miles of transmission pipeline and 2.8 trillion cubic feet of reserves.
The Challenge:
Dominion, headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, has more than 15,000 employees in a variety of subsidiaries to serve its 4 million electric and natural gas customers. Dominion was faced with the time-consuming & complex task of migrating its 15,000+ Notes clients. These clients were distributed in various locations around the country, and the installation footprint varied from machine to machine. In addition:
· Many of the machines had restrictive end-user policies in place that would not permit a user to initiate an installation on the client machine. The process needed to be automatically launched on the machine as well as run unattended.
· The system settings on the machine were not reliable, as some images used to create the user machines had incorrect registry settings, INI settings, etc. for the Lotus Notes installation.
· Machines needed to be checked for available disk space prior to performing the upgrade.
· In some locations, the Notes data directory needed to be migrated from the local drive to a network drive, and "pointer files" needed to be created on the network drive to point back to the local templates.
· In other locations, the process needed to run on kiosk machines, where many users shared the same program files, but each had their own data directory on a mapped drive. The process needed to determine which files (if any) were to be upgraded on a user-by-user basis.
· In yet other locations, the process needed to standardize the Lotus Notes installation directories, locating the files in either "C:\NOTES" or "D:\NOTES" (based on available disk space on the drives).
· All upgrades needed to send an email to a mail-in database to track the progress and success of the upgrade.
· The mail file design needed to be upgraded in synch with the client upgrade, to give the user the full environment on their next usage.
· Dominion utilized Netware running on NT servers, and the client machines were a mix of various versionf of Windows NT/2000/XP. The process needed to dynamically handle the different operating systems, recognizing the unique issues posed by these different environments.
Dominion needed an upgrade solution that would address the various environments existing in their nationwide operations, keep failures to a minimum, and minimize the production time lost by the technical staff and the end user clients during this upgrade. In summary, the automated upgrade needed to be flexible, dynamic, and adaptable to a wide variety of configurations.
The Solution: Lotus Notes Client Upgrade Using InstallPump
After evaluating a number of different tools available in the marketplace, Dominion chose to use InstallPump to automate their entire Lotus Notes upgrade process. Several different tools & approaches were actually tested before this decision; but none of the other options were able to fully handle the environmental variations and eliminate the need to visit the desktops during the process.
InstallPump lived up to its reputation as the all-in-one software distribution and workstation customization solution that solves network software management problems and allows complete control over desktop workstations and applications.
Dominion created 4 separate packages for their functional areas: Gas, Fossil & Hydroelectric, Nuclear, and Electric. These were all based on the original Nuclear script, with the small modifications added as needed to address the other areas. InstallPump is designed for use by administrators, and most projects can be completed without any development experience. For more complex actions, InstallPump features "IPScript", which is an implementation of Visual Basic for Applications, the most common programming language available today (and used by most Lotus programmers in the guise of "LotusScript").
The Return on Investment:
With InstallPump, Dominion was able to fully automate their entire deployment process and centrally track the progress on their existing servers in a mail in database. All of the challenges outlined at the start of the project were accomplished, and the need to send personnel to each target machine was eliminated.
Dominion expects to use InstallPump for numerous desktop management projects each year. Based on just this one use of InstallPump, Dominion has already identified a significant overall savings in both expenses & time spent, with a corresponding increase in productivity. The following information illustrates the benefits in time and expense that have already been achieved.
InstallPump® Upgrade vs. Manual Upgrade
A. Projected expenses if upgrade had been done without InstallPump®; an administrator would have had to visit each desktop to perform the upgrade and the end users would have lost productivity while their systems were being upgraded.
(NOTE: the wage rates used here are conservative industry averages that are similar to, but not actual, Dominion rates)
| Total Time: | 7,500 hours (@ estimated 30 min. per upgrade) |
| Total Admin Labor Expense: | $300,000 (7,500 hours at an average rate of $40/hour) |
| Total Admin Travel Expenses: | Varies based on location of desktops |
| Total Client Down Time Cost: | $187,500 (7,500 hours at an average rate of $25/hour) |
| Total Expenses: | $487,500 + any applicable travel expenses |
B. Using InstallPump®: Creating & testing the complex IPS for their upgrade was completed in 80 person hours. In addition to these costs, Dominion contracted with SoftQuest for consulting services to facilitate the development of the package. This rollout did not require the administrators to visit the client desktops.
(NOTE: the wage rates used here are conservative industry averages that are similar to, but not actual, Dominion rates)
| Total Development Time: | 80 hours |
| Total Monitoring/Recovery Time: | 80 hours |
| Total Admin Labor Expense: | $6,400 (160 hours @ average rate of $40/hour) |
| Total Admin Travel Expense: | None |
| Total Consulting Expenses: | $18,625 |
| Total Client Down Time Expense: | $62,500 (2,500 hours at an average rate of $25/hour) |
| Total 1st Year InstallPump Fees: | $66,000 (covering 15,000 users; subsequent years @ $11,000) |
| Total 1st Year Expenses: | $153,525 |
| Total 1st Year Net Savings: | $333,975 |
| Total 2nd Year Net Savings: | $388,975 |
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