Verizon

4G telecommunications leader leverages Operations Orchestration (OO), Server Automation (SA) for audits automation.

Outcomes

+ Automate, standardize processes eliminating errors, variances and duplicate efforts
+ Reduce MTTR from hours to minutes or seconds

5 yrs

Achieve $35 million in efficiency savings over five years through OO

10k

Deploy Universal Discovery to 10,000 servers over six weeks vs. nine months

Challenge

Verizon Wireless strives to continuously improve network quality, business agility, competitiveness and customer focus.

An innovative market leader, Verizon Wireless strives to continuously improve network quality, business agility, competitiveness and customer focus. For the IT Cloud Services Group (ITCS), this translates to seamless regulatory compliance and cost-efficient service to internal system administrators and application teams. In recent years, Mapes’ tools subgroup focused on automating compliance with PCI and Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) security requirements. Traditionally, system administration teams wrote their own scripts, a time- and labor-intensive process duplicated across teams. They communicated at length and often with auditors and consultants. The process was so complex, they could not feasibly perform every system check. Instead, the team performed subsets of checks on randomized system subsets. Growth and agility demands rendered these hands-on methods unsustainable.

“We centralize and automate. We reduce human error and duplication of effort – and add tracking, reporting and trending. We manage compliance across platforms more productively, with higher business value.”

Christopher Mapes – TECHNICAL STAFF, IT CLOUD SERVICES
Verizon

Details

About Verizon

Verizon Wireless is one of the largest and most reliable 4G LTE networks in the United States with 2014 revenues of $87.6 billion.

Solution

Operations Orchestration (OO), Server Automation (SA), Universal Discovery and Live Network to update SA capabilities. OO automated routine IT tasks. Micro Focus provides platform agnostic flexibility and scalability for Verizon’s multiple operating systems and virtualization platforms. The company uses Network Automation; Network Node Manager i; Micro Focus LoadRunner; Micro Focus SiteScope; Micro Focus Performance Manager; and ProLiant servers. A POC of Storage Essentials is underway and there are plans to implement Micro Focus Operations Bridge, and Operations Manager i (OMi). Verizon wants to take advantage of the Closed Loop Incident Process (CLIP) to integrate processes across Micro Focus solutions. The company is advancing its private cloud with Cloud Service Automation (CSA) and Server Automation.

Results

Using Micro Focus, Verizon Wireless realized the following results:

  • Achieve $35 million in efficiency savings over five years through OO
  • Deploy Universal Discovery to 10,000 servers over six weeks vs. nine months

Verizon continues to realize ongoing benefits using Micro Focus tools, including:

  • Perform all systems checks vs. subsets of checks on system subsets quarterly
  • Automate, standardize processes eliminating errors, variances and duplicate efforts
  • Reduce MTTR from hours to minutes or seconds
  • Run 8,000 to 9,000 flows a month
  • Gain economies of scale to drive out costs
  • Reinvest IT staff time to higher-value projects

Related Stories