Contents | January 2008 | Volume 3, Issue 1
San Angelo Data Center – Moving Forward
The Texas State Data Center (TxSDC), a 22,000 square foot data center located on the campus of Angelo State University (ASU), is one of two modern facilities that will house Texas enterprise data center operations. The TxSDC opened in 1997 and was operated under contract with Northrop Grumman until August 31, 2007, when service delivery transitioned to the Team for Texas as part of the Data Center Services (DCS) contract. Through the new DCS contract, the TxSDC received $1.5 million in upgrades to facilities including expansion of the raised floor data center area, new Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) units, dual power paths from the UPS to computer equipment in the expansion area, and a new computer room air conditioning cooling unit.
The TxSDC is the product of a longstanding collaboration between ASU and DIR to support computer education and provide reliable, cost-effective data center operations for state agencies. The original joint partnership began in 1993 with a vision of a single facility that would incorporate classrooms, microcomputer labs, faculty offices, and the state data center. The center became operational in December 1996. In January 1997, ASU held the first onsite classes, and the first customer—the Texas Education Agency—migrated to the data center. Today, TxSDC stores approximately 200 terabytes of data and hosts operations for ten agencies. Bobby Bruner, Operations Manager, and Team for Texas senior leadership continue to keep the TxSDC educational mission a priority. The data center offers career opportunities to students and many current employees are ASU graduates and long-time San Angelo residents. The staff see their work as more than just a job—it is a commitment and service to their state, community, and alma mater.
The DCS contract expands the role of the TxSDC. With ten years of experience in service to Texas state agencies, the staff and operational processes serve as a model for the Austin Data Center (ADC) and Team for Texas. TxSDC staff actively share lessons learned and best practices to help the Team for Texas improve services in San Angelo, Austin, and the current agency data centers. For example, Mike Burrows, a team leader and automation specialist at TxSDC, is developing a set of database tools to automate service level agreement reporting. Such knowledge transfer will continue to increase in value as additional agencies migrate to the TxSDC and the state moves forward with the transformation process.
Leveraging the resources of the TxSDC has many benefits. It supports the state’s enterprise infrastructure goals, creates economic opportunities for San Angelo and its citizens, and enables the management and technicians of the TxSDC to share their knowledge and improve the DCS program. As stated by Bruner, “There is really something special about this place, and we hope to see it grow and become more influential in the future.”
New Team for Texas Leadership
Team for Texas has made several leadership team changes over the past few months. Changes include executives, business office, and service delivery staff. Some of the new team members are highlighted below.
Ken Weiss, Vice President and Project Executive, leads the Team for Texas and is accountable for fulfillment of all contract goals. Ken’s counterpart in the DIR organization is Sally Ward, Data Center Services Manager. Within the IBM organization, Ken has responsibility for strategic outsourcing contracts. Ken’s previous roles include management positions in field service, offering development, service planning, integrated technology services, strategic outsourcing delivery, engagement services, and global operations optimization.
Bob Jones, Director of Service Delivery, has responsibility for day-to-day operations management including current agency data centers, the consolidated state data centers, and print/mail services. Bob’s organization includes the service delivery managers, the business office, and security. Bob has over 30 years experience in technology service delivery in multiple industry segments and 12 years of experience in managing outsourcing contracts.
Nicole Creed joined IBM to take the role of Relationship Manager. Nicole has responsibility for communications within Team for Texas and between Team for Texas and the agencies. The client services advocates and communications team report to Nicole, who also manages the customer satisfaction survey process. Nicole has extensive experience with Texas state agencies through her work with TexasOnline and as a director with Northrop Grumman on the prior data center services contract with the Health and Human Services agencies.
Don Cates, Deputy Project Executive, has over 40 years experience in customer relations, outsourced operations in both distributed and centralized locations, vendor management, and consolidation and integration of business processes. Don has served on a variety of public and private sector projects. Most recently, he served as the Senior Project Executive for Manpower Corporation, facilitating the transition from customer data centers to IBM’s transformed steady state operations.
Don Fitzpatrick, the Transition and Transformation Manager, is the focal point for all transition and transformation activities affecting agencies. He manages the transition of affected staff to Team for Texas organizations and reports the status of transformation milestones to the Director of Service Delivery. Don has over 22 years of experience in data center consolidation, systems migration, transition, e-business hosting and ongoing operational efforts in both distributed and centralized environments.
New Print and Mail Capabilities
The Texas DCS program includes bulk print and mail services for 11 state agencies. These services form an important part of agency operations and are vital link between the agencies and citizens. Mailed items include a variety of correspondence such as benefits letters and medical forms (Texas Department of Insurance), notices and permits (Railroad Commission of Texas), and unemployment benefit forms and hearing notices (Texas Workforce Commission). Print and mail for the Health and Human Services Commission, which represents 50 percent of the DCS print volume at several million mailed pieces per month (Medicaid IDs, Medicaid benefit packets, hearing notices, etc.), migrated to the data center in November. The remaining migrations are scheduled for completion by the spring of 2008.
As services move from the legacy agency facilities to the data center, new print and mail technology will replace aging equipment currently installed at the agencies. Although some agencies had fairly advanced print and mail facilities, all will see improved capability after migration. The new print center features a centralized print manager, a system that monitors multiple print jobs from request to execution. The centralized services and new technology will enable greater consistency, privacy, and efficiency in service delivery.
Upgrades include new services and state-of-the-art equipment. One new service is NearStar, an integrated system that collects and records all print data and provides real-time document tracking. NearStar assigns and prints a bar code to each page of a print job for accurate and efficient tracking, increased consistency, and privacy protection. From their desks, end users can view printed documents online, track the exact status in the print queue, and receive email notifications of mail delivery through the NearStar Web interface.
New equipment includes specialized printers and inserters to support NearStar. Highlight color printers—which print in black, white, and a highlight color—will allow state agencies to use color for the first time to emphasize important information in customer mailings. These highlight machines print 180 impressions per minute, while new black and white printers will produce at speeds up to 1,050 impressions per minute. Postal equipment, such as Flexible Productivity System Inserters, will insert and seal up to 10,000 envelopes an hour. These new systems represent the cutting edge for print and mail technology.
The technology changes will introduce enterprise disaster recovery for print and mail services to Texas. A back-up facility with similar equipment will provide print and mail functionality if the Austin Data Center is ever interrupted by a disaster. Disaster recovery for print and mail services provides an important level of redundancy for this vital activity, ensuring that mail will continue to reach citizens uninterrupted even if the ADC is not available. Backup functionality will be operative by April 2008.
Print and mail Services are performed by the Team for Texas partners, Xerox and Pitney Bowes. Xerox manages the print functions while Pitney Bowes handles mail services.
Remedy® Improvements On the Way
In response to agency requests, Team for Texas staff have completed several updates to the Remedy Requester Console. Upcoming changes will provide Remedy users with access to more information, add filtering capability for searches, and improve incident escalations. These changes will be put into production after close of business January 9. Authorized Users will be provided with an overview of the new features through a Webinar at 3 PM on January 9.
New Requester Console Tabs
Changes to the Requester Console will allow state agency Remedy users to see all information about incidents and changes that Team for Texas resolvers see. In addition to the work info tab users currently see, users will have several new tabs with detailed information on the request. These tabs include dates (to track progress of a request), relationships (to view any related requests), and assignment (to view who is managing he request). For incidents, users will also have a tab labeled “SLM” that provides preliminary indications of performance against service levels. Because service level calculations are too complex to be calculated by Remedy, the SLM tab does not capture formal or final service level results. All of this information will enhance visibility into how a request is being handled, what different tasks are completed, and how long each step in the resolution process takes.
Filters
For the first time, agency users will be able to filter requests rather than viewing all requests for their agency. This new feature will allow users to filter by status (canceled, closed, open, pending, or resolved/completed), request type (incident or change), or any word in the summary field (e.g., “failure”). Having the filter in place will greatly speed common searches, like the search for all open requests.
Incident Escalation
To improve tracking incidents and engage the appropriate subject matter experts at the right time, Team for Texas has refined the Remedy notification process. The changes involve mapping the areas of responsibility for incidents to positions within the team so notifications can be targeted by role. The tool will now automatically notify system resolvers through email or page the time of incident, severity level, customers affected, and status of other dependent systems and applications. If an incident is not closed within designated time frames, automatic escalation notifications are sent to higher and higher levels of Team for Texas management until the incident is resolved.
Increasing the precision and frequency of notification provides greater accountability for resolution and improved tracking of the steps toward resolution. With greater emphasis on accountability, agencies can expect issues, both critical and non-critical, to be addressed quickly and by the correct personnel. Coupled with increased visibility into Remedy request management, these enhancements help users see progress and, ultimately, provide better reports and service to their customers and management.
