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Citrix Managed Service Case StudyNSK |
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Citrix Managed Service from Centralis delivers improved
reliability for leading UK manufacturer “The Centralis Service Desk is by far and away the best for friendly and efficient service." Tony Doran, Head of I.S. Europe, NSK |
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| Features: Citrix Managed Service, Application Delivery, Centralisation, Centralis Managed Services & Support | |
Summary
Supporting manufacturing excellence - how Centralis’ managed service has helped NSK improve the reliability and availability of its' key application delivery environment.
About the Customer
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" NSK uses many partners to deliver its services and the Centralis Service Desk is by far and away the best for friendly and efficient service. " |
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Tony Doran, Head of I.S. Europe, NSK |
NSK is a global leading supplier of bearings, automotive components and steering systems, precision and mechatronic products. The NSK Group employs more than 23,000 people worldwide.
The NSK Group’s European arm, NSK Europe, brings together: pan-European sales operations; manufacturing bases in the UK, Poland and Germany; distribution centres in the Netherlands, Germany and UK; state-of-the-art technology centres; and a comprehensive network of local authorised distributors.
The sales operations consist of three autonomous business units focused on Bearings, Precision products and Automotive markets with local sales offices throughout Europe.
The Challenge
NSK Europe Ltd with its Headquarters in Maidenhead, England is part of
the NSK LTD global organisation.
NSK Europe, employs over 4000 people throughout its pan-European
operations with Manufacturing bases in the UK, Poland and Germany;
Distribution Centres in the Netherlands, Germany and UK;
state-of-the-art Technology Centres; and a comprehensive network of
Country based Sales offices. The Sales operation consists of four
Business Units focused on the Industrial Bearings, Precision products,
Automotive Bearings and Automotive Component markets.
Since the late 1990s, NSK Europe has used Citrix to deliver key applications to personnel in the UK and mainland Europe. In 2001, it was recognised that the performance of those systems was falling below acceptable standards and Centralis was invited to carry out an audit on the installation and to recommend remedial work.
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" Our managed service customers need to know that their application delivery environment is up to date with best practice and optimised for performance. " |
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Ewen Anderson, Managing Director, Centralis |
The Centralis Solution
A Health Check on the installation was carried out by Centralis and a programme of work was carried out that helped to stabilise the Citrix environment and provided an improved quality of service.
In late 2003, NSK Europe engaged Centralis to take full day-to-day
responsibility for the Citrix farm in order to allow its IT team to
concentrate on more productive areas of service improvement. Centralis
commenced this Managed Service in January 2004, providing a daily check
on the Citrix infrastructure, unlimited technical support and taking
full responsibility for management and maintenance.
This support involves close liaison with NSK Europe's internal Service Desk for reporting and processing relevant support calls and integration with NSK's change control systems in order that change to the Citrix environment is strictly controlled. Based around a monthly service report, a review is held involving a dedicated Consultant and Account Manager from Centralis and NSK Europe's IT team and discusses performance against SLAs, logged calls and trends, projects and plans.
Ewen Anderson, Managing Director at Centralis comments "Our managed service customers need to know that their application delivery environment is up to date with best practice and optimised for performance. We combine monthly reports with an annual health check to make sure that the customer can see that everything is running smoothly behind the scenes."
The Benefits to the Customer
The proactive nature of the Centralis Managed Service, together with tight control over changes, have greatly improved the reliability and availability of Citrix services to NSK Europe's operations, as acknowledged by Tony Doran, the Head of I.S Europe: "NSK uses many partners to deliver its services and the Centralis Service Desk is by far and away the best for friendly and efficient service."