Caso black&decker

SOLUTIONS • CONSOLIDATION • MANAGEMENT/UTILITIES • VIRTUALIZATION

Home Improvement

Customer profIle

Country: United States Industry: Manufacturing Founded: 1910 number oF employees: 4,000 Web Address: www.bdhhi.com
CHallenge

Black & Decker Hardware and Home Improvement simplifies its IT infrastructure and increases systems administrator productivity for deployments by 35 percentA rapidly growing number of servers required extensive IT labor to deploy, monitor, and manage. The division’s global fleet of over 2,200 desktop and notebook computers was becoming increasingly difficult to manage.
solutIon

The division utilized Microsoft® System Center Operations Manager 2007 with the Dell™ Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 to view and monitorMicrosoft software and system status of Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers from one location. Microsoft® Systems Management Server (SMS) reliably targets delivery of updates for both software and hardware from the Microsoft® SMS console. The division simplified its IT environment by consolidating servers.
BenefIts

Run IT Better • Use of System Center Operations Manager 2007 and SMS increased systemsadministrator productivity for deployments by 35 percent • SMS enabled IT staff to resolve 90 percent of service requests in a single call Grow IT Smarter • Server consolidation saved the division over US$800,000 in a three-year period and reduced the footprint of its server farm by 70 percent

When it comes to home improvement, there is no company with a broader market reach than Black & Decker.The company’s Hardware and Home Improvement (HHI) division produces several well-known brands including KwikSet, Price Pfister, Weiser Lock, and Baldwin Hardware.

“dell Is a great partner BeCause It provIdes exCellent advICe, BaCKs us up teCHnICally, and Helps us Improve operatIons—savIng Hundreds of tHousands of dollars In tHe proCess.”
Tom Mendelboim, manager of network technologies, Black& Decker Hardware and Home Improvement division

To keep operations running smoothly, the HHI division needs an IT infrastructure that is responsive to the vast global business operation. The HHI division operates seven major manufacturing sites worldwide, and IT is at the heart of the division’s operations. groWIng It InfrastruCture Is dIffICult to manage The division was growing quickly and sowas IT, resulting in a more complex IT infrastructure. As the number of servers required to support the division’s many applications grew, so did the amount of IT labor needed to implement, monitor, and manage servers and storage. The division had over 160 servers, and most of them ran only a single application. Responsiveness had become a challenge because whenever the IT team added a newapplication, they had to purchase, deploy, and manage an additional server. As the number of applications and associated physical servers increased, the IT team was spending more and more time dealing with the additional complexity. Complexity was increasing on the client side, too. Growth had pushed the number of desktop and notebook computers to over 2,200. The division’s IT team had very littlevisibility into the configuration and status of the client computers

and other equipment used by employees. With little or no information about the computers, it was time-consuming for technicians to troubleshoot problems and install software. HHI partners WItH dell to Help sImplIfy It It was clear that IT simplification was the key to solving the issues created by growth. Tom Mendelboim, manager ofnetwork technologies at Black & Decker, asked Dell to help him sort out the manageability challenge because the HHI division had long since standardized on Dell desktop and notebook computers, and Mendelboim was very pleased with the quality of Dell products and services. “Dell has been the number one choice for me,” says Mendelboim. “Dell always seems to have its ducks in a row in terms of...