MCI's Call Centers Move to NT 4.0

"With NT 4.0," Ashapa said, "the team has developed a universal image that supports any workstation, regardless of hardware architecture. Along with the universal image, the team has incorporated many of the post-imaging configurations, streamlining the process even further. As a result of this universal image, the team gets to spend the majority of its time on implementation and rollout techniques."

It takes about a week to install, configure, and deploy the NT 4.0 server at a call center, according to Ashapa. The NT architecture team trains the call center operations staff during the rollout. After all systems are operational, a corporate training group provides basic Windows instruction to the sales and service representatives.

"The sales and service representatives have responded enthusiastically to the NT GUI," said Ashapa. "They really love it. Much more information is available to the representatives, so it helps them in their jobs quite a bit."

MCI administers the call centers both locally (through on-site NT administrators) and remotely (through the NT architecture team). "Each call center has several NT administrators on site," said Ashapa. "In addition, the NT architecture team uses SMS 1.2 SP2 for software distribution, system configurations and modifications, version control and inventory, remote control, and systems diagnostics. The team releases system enhancements or upgrades a few times a month to all workstations. With SMS, the team runs Compaq Insight Manager for progressive monitoring of servers. Team members also take advantage of tools in the NT and BackOffice resource kits, along with tools they've developed."

Migration Brings Benefits and Challenges
Because of the NT architecture team's continual refinement of the NT implementation and rollout techniques, the migration of the remaining call centers will occur at an increasingly accelerated pace. The team will likely finish the migration during the first half of 1998.

Although the migration isn't finished, MCI is already realizing the benefits. "With the migration to NT and the numerous hardware and network improvements," he observes, "MCI will have a universal architecture that will be able to support any function, at any call center, at any time. From the first deployment to the most recent, MCI has had nearly 100 percent uptime on NT."

NT is also helping MCI reduce costs. "NT's standardization saves MCI a tremendous amount of development and support costs," said Ashapa. "Each call center only needs two or three NT administrators to successfully support it. This ratio is unheard of in the industry."

With its benefits, NT brought an entirely new set of systems management variables and challenges. "With NT, the team applies sales applications or OS changes to thousands of workstations," said Ashapa. "That's completely different from releasing a single change to old VMS boxes. If an NT release were to fail, recovery would require tremendous resources. For this reason, the team conducts testing, pilot releases, and beta implementations to ensure systems integrity."

As for the challenges, Ashapa noted that NT 4.0 has some weaknesses, such as the lack of enterprise directory services and stability problems with Service Packs. "However, you can overcome both of these with proper planning and testing," said Ashapa. "In addition, NT will only get better in the coming years with new technologies and features, such as clustering, Distributed File System, Active Directory, and the Zero Administration Windows initiative."