MCI's Call Centers Move to NT 4.0

The NT architecture team is leading the way

In the fiercely competitive arena of global telecommunications, a company has to win and keep new customers. MCI Telecommunications continues to expand its core long-distance business while developing new and emerging markets. Windows NT is a key technology component in the company's aggressive $18.5 billion strategy to capture market share in paging, Internet, and specialized business services as well as in the $100 billion US market for local phone service. Founded in 1968 and headquartered in Washington, DC, MCI ranks 59th in the 1996 FORTUNE 500. About 55,000 employees work in 300 offices worldwide.

In 1995, MCI started an ambitious migration to NT 4.0 in 20 call centersacross the US. The migration is part of an ongoing improvement process thatincludes upgrading MCI's NT 3.51 architecture to NT 4.0 in call centers that have already migrated, and installing new NT 4.0 workstations and servers in those that have not migrated.

"MCI needed a secure, manageable operating system (OS) platform for the 17,000-plus seats in our call centers," said Craig Ashapa (see "Interview with Craig Ashapa") manager of NT architecture-mass markets, MCI, Atlanta, Georgia. "The call center is MCI's primary vehicle for marketing new products and services to both current andprospective customers as well as for providing a high level of customer service to existing customers."

About 400 to 1000 sales and service representatives work at a typical callcenter. They conduct outbound telemarketing sales, handle inbound salesgenerated from ad campaigns, and answer customer service calls. Redundant T1 orDS3 lines connect each call center to MCI's main WAN/metropolitan area network.

"Before MCI went with the NT solution, it was mostly an OS/2 shop,"said Ashapa. "The customer service applications ran on about 6000 OS/2 machines. But it was clear that industry support forOS/2 was waning, while support for NT was beginning to explode." So MCI decided to migrate to NT because of its industry support, systems security,application development, systems configurability and manageability, andcompatibility with other systems.

Migration Takes a Team Effort
An NT architecture team, with members in Atlanta, Georgia, and ColoradoSprings, Colorado, spearheads MCI's migration effort. The team is responsiblefor not only deploying NT, but also for managing enterprisewide systems,supporting third-level systems, documenting systems, and managing vendorrelations. The team has migrated 4000 terminals to NT and configured more than80 NT servers. The team continues to implement architecture migrations in theremaining call centers.

The NT architecture team spends a great deal of time planning, designing,pilot testing, and deploying migration techniques. After deployment, the teamrefines the migration process so that it can apply the improved process to thenext assignment.

Although the architecture team is NT-savvy, it can't do everything byitself. "Various groups are involved in the overall systems implementation,"said Ashapa. "The NT architecture team works with application developers,database architects and administrators, network architects and administrators,and call center support staff. Each person provides a piece of the overallarchitecture puzzle. Successful implementation of the NT solution depends oneach piece fitting together."

The migration process occurs in several phases to reduce or eliminatedowntime. First, MCI installs the servers. A typical call center features fourto six Compaq ProLiant 5000R, 4500R, or 2500R multiprocessor, rack-mount serverswith up to 512MB of RAM. Mass storage includes Compaq SMART-2 Array Controllersin RAID-5 with hot-swap spares, numerous (as many as 17) 4.3GB to 9.1GB drives,and Compaq DLT backup drives. Gammalink Fax boards and 100 Mbit Ethernetcomplete the hardware.

Specific configurations vary according to server roles, which might includedomain control and systems management; file, application, and print serving; Webintranet services; fax and email services; and, of course, telephony. "Thetelephony applications servers interface with the MCI sales application, Oracledatabase, and a dialer/switch for coordinating the autodialing capabilities ofthe sales application," said Ashapa. "NT has provided a robust,stable, manageable platform for this component of the architecture."Existing servers run NT Server 3.51 Service Pack 5 (SP5), but MCI is upgradingthese to NT Server 4.0. New servers run NT 4.0.

In the next phase, hardware personnel install new workstations beside theold machines after call center business hours. The call center's frontlineworkstation is the Compaq DeskPro 6000 (models 5166, 5200, or XL 5133) with 32MBof RAM and a 1GB to 2GB hard disk. A Matrox Millennium graphics card drives a 17"Compaq monitor to round out the typical workhorse machine. About 400 to 1000 ofthese NT 3.51 or NT 4.0 machines populate a call center.

After the servers and workstations are installed, the NT architecture teamtests, configures, and loads OS software images. The release of NT 4.0 has madethe team's job much easier. "For the migration of existing or new hardwarebefore the release of NT 4.0, the NT architecture team had to develop and testspecific OS configurations," said Ashapa. "Each machine architectureneeded a unique NT 3.51 image developed to support various hardwareconfigurations, such as video cards, IDE or SCSI, and Token Ring or Ethernet."The team built the required software images, stored them on a server, and usedMicrosoft tools (UPLODPRF.EXE and WINNTP.EXE) to distribute them to therespective machines. After distribution, the team used Systems Management Server(SMS) 1.2 SP2 to complete the system configurations.

"With NT 4.0," Ashapa said, "the team has developed auniversal image that supports any workstation, regardless of hardwarearchitecture. Along with the universal image, the team has incorporatedmany 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 itstime on implementation and rollout techniques."

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

"The sales and service representatives have responded enthusiasticallyto the NT GUI," said Ashapa. "They really love it. Much moreinformation is available to the representatives, so it helps them in their jobsquite a bit."

MCI administers the call centers both locally (through on-site NTadministrators) and remotely (through the NT architecture team). "Each callcenter has several NT administrators on site," said Ashapa. "Inaddition, the NT architecture team uses SMS 1.2 SP2 for software distribution,system configurations and modifications, version control and inventory, remotecontrol, and systems diagnostics. The team releases system enhancements orupgrades a few times a month to all workstations. With SMS, the team runs CompaqInsight Manager for progressive monitoring of servers. Team members also takeadvantage of tools in the NT and BackOffice resource kits, along with toolsthey've developed."

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

Although the migration isn't finished, MCI is already realizing thebenefits. "With the migration to NT and the numerous hardware and networkimprovements," he observes, "MCI will have a universal architecturethat will be able to support any function, at any call center, at any time. Fromthe first deployment to the most recent, MCI has had nearly 100 percent uptimeon NT."

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

With its benefits, NT brought an entirely new set of systems managementvariables and challenges. "With NT, the team applies sales applications orOS changes to thousands of workstations," said Ashapa. "That'scompletely different from releasing a single change to old VMS boxes. If an NTrelease were to fail, recovery would require tremendous resources. For thisreason, the team conducts testing, pilot releases, and beta implementations toensure systems integrity."

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