Thales Rail Signal Solutions (Canada)
Thales Rail Signaling Solutions, a component of the Security Solutions, and Services division, is a supplier of software-based control systems for safe management of rail transportation. The Toronto-based Canadian operation is the Thales Centre of Excellence for urban rail signaling and control systems with customers around the globe. Current projects include customers in the UK, China, Korea, Dubai, and the U.S. Thales Toronto is a very dynamic operation from both an employee movement perspective (inter-departmental Move-Add-Change), and from a travel perspective (substantial requirement for remote connectivity).
Upon taking ownership of the account in early 2010, Quartet oversaw a highly complex office move. This involved migrating the desktop hardware of 1,200 employees, setting up parallel networks at both old and new locations, planning and performing the move of 150 servers and designing and installing a network of wireless access points.
In addition to providing helpdesk support and managing their server infrastructure on a regular basis, Quartet has also been brought in on several projects including:
- Managing the installation of a wireless connection between two locations,
- Replacing and installing $500,000 worth of new server equipment,
- Managing a large document migration,
- Transferring from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook,
- Installing an advanced environmental monitoring system in the server room and project development labs
The Information Technology department (IT) delivers services related primarily to infrastructure, and the managed desktop. It is responsible for providing systems and services to all Thales Canada employees in the Toronto, Vancouver, and Pittsburgh (U.S.) offices, as well as pre-defined business partners and contractors. Selected services are also provided to associated Thales personnel in the UK, and China.
Quartet provides Thales with a dedicated Help Desk, Desk-side support, Telecommunication Support, Server Management, Asset Management and Project Management.
Server Management
Quartet actively manages 150 virtual servers that Thales has on a VMWare platform. These include the company’s mail, ERP (SAP), storage, backup and application servers, as well as a group of specialized simulators for the R&D division.
The current server layout was planned and executed by Quartet when Thales moved offices in 2010. Planning the new server room’s configuration took 5 months, taking into account power consumption, wiring configuration, switch design, heat management and SAN distribution. The result was a highly detailed plan coordinating Thales staff, movers, onsite technicians and server specialists. Over a series of weekends, these servers were uninstalled, packed, moved, patched and reinstalled on the new network. All this was achieved without any server downtime during business hours.
“Quartet stepped in at a verytime, no question about it. There were a million things going on, and it all had to happen in a short time frame. Having got through that, and looking back made us think ‘OK, this is a can-do crowd.’” – Mike Waterstrat
On a service basis, these are managed and monitored on a continuous basis, by a team of server technicians. Every month, they are manually patched, with a 100% success rate.
Integration
Upon arriving at Thales, Quartet augmented their existing staff with a further 8 employees with specialties in projects.
“Because of the fact that most of the people that had previously worked in the building… thereafter migrated to Quartet, it was an extraordinarily low-impact transition. It worked out very well.” – Mike Waterstrat
Our solution was based upon the same staffing-pool model as the GTAA; additional employees are readily available for any emergencies or out of scope work. Quartet has a reputation at Thales for always getting the job done first, regardless of contracts.
Shortly after Quartet’s arrival, Thales’ existing network manager left for another division, leaving them without a reliable replacement. Quartet suggested filling the vacancy with one of their employees. He is now a full time Thales employee.
Cost Savings
Quartet has guaranteed to reduce the operating costs at Thales over a 3 year period. In addition to this, Quartet is consistently equal to or under budget on all Thales projects. This is a result of fair and reasonable estimations, followed by various efficiencies that we bring to the table. After the initiation period at Thales, we proposed and implemented changes to the support processes that yielded a 9% savings immediately, without any service degradation. We also mapped out a plan for further efficiencies based on desktop virtualization, process efficiencies and hardware refresh programs.
“Nobody gets your trust without earning it. Quartet has stepped up on a number of occasions and said ‘You know what, I’ll do that and I won’t charge you for it.’ When they come back and say ‘I’m going to have to bill you for this,’ we trust them. The tendencies they’ve had to get things right in the past leads us to believe that they’ll get it right in the future. If I had to form an IT team of my own, I’d hire them all. That’s really what it comes down to.” – Mike Waterstrat
