At a glance Country: SwitzerlandIndustry: TelecommunicationsFounded: 1996Employees: 1,650Website: www.sunrise.ch

ChallengeSunrise operates in a highly competitive market characterized by ever-changing regulations and unpredictable customer behavior. The company relies on its ability to adapt efficiently and remain innovative, preferring to concentrate on its core business. It therefore sources services such as multi-vendor support from external providers to lower its operating costs.

SolutionSupport for the entire multi-vendor landscape is now provided by Fujitsu. A standardized stock-take carried out at the start of the project has made both the support costs and the costs of the systems themselves more transparent. SLAs can be changed month-to-month, thereby reducing costs and increasing flexibility.

Benefit■ Standardized stock-take process has

provided transparency

■ Service levels can be amended on a monthly basis to reduce costs and optimize support for the business

■ Multi-vendor support with one single point of contact for all hardware issues

Swiss telecommunications service provider Sunrise outsourced support for its multi-vendor landscape to Fujitsu, thereby lowering costs and increasing quality.

Marc Frankenhauser Senior Manager Commercial Management Infrastructure Sunrise Communications AG

“ Fujitsu really impressed us with both the assistance and advice they provided during the tender and their high-quality processes. The support we now receive is not only more cost-effective, but also better quality.”

CASE STUDY

ChallengeSwiss telecommunications provider Sunrise operates in a highly competitive market characterized by fast-changing regulations and unpredictable customer behavior. It relies on its ability to adapt efficiently and remain innovative, preferring to concentrate on its core business. Sourcing services from external providers, such as multi-vendor support for the IT infrastructure in its data centers, provides the company with transparency over its existing systems and reduces its operating costs.

SolutionSunrise has a heterogeneous IT landscape in its data centers, and maintaining the systems through multiple separate contracts had become complicated and time-consuming. “For me, it was important to source multi-vendor support from a single supplier. We wanted the same SLAs for all of our hardware, and standardizing everything has enabled us to achieve this. Plus, the new support model means that we now have one single point of contact for any and all of our hardware issues,” says Marc Frankenhauser, Senior Manager of Sunrise Communications AG’s Commercial Management Infrastructure team, clarifying the benefits of the universal, manufacturer-agnostic support concept.

Lower support costs and considerable improvements to process quality were two of the key factors behind Sunrise’s decision to switch to multi-vendor support. It also simplifies the way it manages its data centers. By carrying out a standardized stock-take at the start of the project, the quality of the company’s data on its own IT systems was improved considerably. “Before we introduced the multi-vendor approach, our data accuracy level for the data center was at 65 percent. We have now increased this to 95 percent. We know more precisely which systems we are running in which configurations at which site, with which operating systems and what length of warranty remaining,” explains Frankenhauser.

He also now has the option of redefining service levels on a monthly rather than annual basis. The amount of effort required to do this is minimal, he explains, as there is a standardized process. “Each month we go through the system inventory and the associated support levels for each system, making any adjustments to reflect where new systems have been added or old ones taken away during the previous month. This gives us a great deal of flexibility,” says Frankenhauser.

Previously, the company had contracts with a number of different hardware manufacturers, each with different contents and expiry dates. Now the systems can be reprioritized month-by-month, so servers for projects with higher priorities can be set to a higher support level for a defined period of time, while others that contain redundant data can be taken down a level. There were a lot of changes in the first few months after this new process was introduced, but it is now down to between three and five percent.

The biggest challenge was recording the existing inventory in a standardized way at the start of the project. “We began by determining the revision status of the current hardware configurations, then made additional updates where they were needed. The process was completed three months after implementation,” says Frankenhauser.

BenefitThe Fujitsu team really impressed Frankenhauser with both the competent assistance and advice they provided during the tender, and their high-quality processes. “The hardware support we now receive is not only more cost-effective for us, but also better quality,” he explains. With the new solution, Frankenhauser now has greater transparency over the existing infrastructure, and he has also been able to achieve further cost savings by keeping older data center hardware running rather than replacing it when the maintenance contract with the manufacturer expires. “This makes us more independent of the manufacturers, who normally want to sell us new hardware every three years or so. We now have the option to continue using older devices for longer, thereby reducing our costs,” adds Frankenhauser.

Perhaps the most important benefit of these cost savings is that the company is now able to give its demanding telecommunications customers what they want – services at lower prices. “We think it is an excellent solution for all companies that use hardware from a number of different manufacturers at different locations,” says Frankenhauser. He believes that the high price pressures in the telecommunications sector make companies like Sunrise ideal candidates for solutions of this nature. Frankenhauser is also considering working with Fujitsu on other projects in future. “If there are options to expand the services we receive, we would definitely be interested. Not just because Fujitsu provided excellent service, but also because they actively helped us to approach new topics and uncover our weak points.”

CustomerSunrise is the largest private telecommunications provider in Switzerland, covering all areas of the industry: mobile, landlines, internet and digital TV. The company puts the needs and satisfaction of its customers at the forefront of its business.

Products and services ■ Multi-vendor support across multiple sites■ Stock-take at the start of the project

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