CHEP 97 Berlin, April 97Frédéric Hemmer1/11 Managing Outsourcing Contracts for System...

CHEP 97 Berlin, April 97 Frédéric Hemmer 1/11

Managing Outsourcing Contracts for System Administration

Frédéric Hemmer

CERN


Capacity explosion

Physics Data Processing capacity Benefits

Cheaper and more affordable computing cycles

Large data stores Services dedicated to experiments

Large increase of computer nodes (20 in 1990, 300 now)

Over 1000 disks need for more manpower to perform

the system administration

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Manpower evolution

Physics Data Processing manpower system administration user support general administration planning etc.

Total decreased by 25 % Sys. Admin. decreased by 40 %

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Total Systems Administration


Outsourcing Very wide definition

Total outsourcing of a service Total transfer of ownership (equipment, infrastructure and staff) Long term mega-deals Temporary labour contracts Selective sourcing (scope, size and duration)

different activities lead to different management attention create constant competition more flexibility to adapt to changes

We try to follow this approach


“Best Practices in Information Technology Sourcing”

M.C. Lacity, L.P. Wilcocks

Executive Research Briefing, Oxford Institute of Information Management, Templeton College,

University of Oxford1996


Our approach

Short term contracts System administration only CERN retains planning, HW

purchase/maintenance, user support, choice of technology and architecture

SLA’s defining quality measures At least two contracts (offset in time)

allows for regular retendering (competition)


Our experience (1)

Initially tried to use temporary labour Difficulty in finding experience candidates CERN policy evolved to service contracts

Difficulty to express specifications of sys. admin. Outsourced the task of writing the specifications Long iterative process Vendor and customer have different goals ! Contract covering 28 HP and 27 DEC starting Jan. 96


Our experience (2)

Documents Service Definition Document (Scope, communication and escalation

procedures) Service Level Agreement (responsibilities, tasks and performance metrics) Specific Sys. Admin. documents for each system

System Administration tasks installation, configuration changes, reactive and proactive problem

management, development of service quality and performance measurements Aggressive timescale

2 months for sys. admin. guides, take over one month later


Our experience (3) May review

Objectives met No degradation in service Documentation very good Improvements needed

Communication needs to be more formal Mastersoft’s OSM

• Inventory, SLA, communication, reporting, quality measurement System managers showed reluctance to give away “their” systems

(lack of confidence, faster to fix it now). Not solved yet. Decided to expand

24/hours day later expand to all DEC, HP, SUN and SGI equipment


Potential Problem areas Call Management System

Installed in Autumn, not used before March• No PC for our OPS manager• Lack of momentum in contract follow-up (increased

responsibilities of the team leader, staffing problems)

no quality or performance measures Coverage and end of 96 shutdown

Contract excluded this period Period of intense activity as the computers are down

return of control to CERN staff Contractor’s staff stability

unable to test whether procedures and documentation are enough


Conclusions Globally positive

Procedures well documented Very few problems/mistakes Not too many delays Clear cost attributable to system administration Scaling up no longer limited by CERN staffing level

Improvement needed More involvement from CERN needed in contract follow-up The performance metrics need to be gathered and analysed

We hope to assess performance by the summer and be ready for tendering at the end of the year.

CHEP 97 Berlin, April 97Frédéric Hemmer1/11 Managing Outsourcing Contracts for System...

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