The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service
Scenario
Well Managed Infrastructure – Desktop Change and Configuration Management
Situation
The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) is a department of the Scottish Executive. It provides an independent public prosecution and deaths-investigation service, administered from 62 sites throughout Scotland.
COPFS wanted to roll out a customised desktop application to more than 2,000 desktops, reduce paper use, and improve business decision making. However, its existing remote management tool could not deploy executable files, and a manual implementation would be costly and time consuming.
Charteris Role
Charteris – working closely with Microsoft – were appointed by COPFS to implement Microsoft® Systems Management Server 2003 and to advise on suitable operational processes, to take advantage of its remote software deployment, update management, and asset management features.
Our work included:
- Design and implementation of an enterprise wide change and configuration management system.
- Design and implementation of effective operational procedures to support patch management and software distribution.
- Skills transfer to the in-house team on all aspects of the solution and associated processes.
- Project management of the full project lifecycle.
Solution
The resultant solution not only delivered the first phase of the application overnight, but also significantly enhanced security with overnight update management. Key features of the production infrastructure now include:
- Huge cost savings as 62 site visits no longer needed per desktop change.
- 95% of computers receive security features within 24 hours.
- Remaining 5% consisting of mobile users updated within 48 hours.
- Vastly reduced time to change and management costs.
- Inventory and asset-management capabilities.
- Over 2,000 PCs upgraded to latest release of business critical client software within 12 hours every 6 weeks.
Laurie Brown, Infrastructure Manager for COPFS sums up the project: "As well as making large savings on costs and time, we have reduced total cost of ownership because the IT team can remotely assess and address desktop issues at outlying sites. Where we are today, compared to where we were before is fantastic. We can see what is going on at any location and at any time."
Please click here to download a detailed case study about the work undertaken by Charteris at The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.