In recent years, Compass Group has launched a number of Web sites and internal line of business Web applications, most of which have been developed on disparate infrastructures and supported by multiple hosting providers. Bob Lonsdale IT Director Compass Group UK & Ireland explains the issues,

"Working with a number of providers meant that the service levels for different applications would vary on a regular basis. This posed significant problems for Compass Group's 375,000 employees, some of whom work in extremely remote locations." As more applications were introduced, the cost of providing multiple premises and hardware, as well as the operational overhead of running several systems would continue to increase.

Late last year, Compass developed a new e-procurement system, allowing outlets to order stock online, 24 x 7. When considering its ongoing management, the decision was made to consolidate the infrastructure supporting all Compass Group's Internet applications to a single provider. Compass knew they could save thousands of pounds in additional hardware and management costs by migrating all sites to a single bespoke architecture.

Previous suppliers Cable & Wireless and Energis were replaced and Attenda was awarded the contract to migrate the corporate Web site, intranet, supplier-centric extranet and new e-procurement site to a consolidated infrastructure to improve the availability, security and performance of the applications. The sites are managed 24 x 7 from Attenda's state of the art Monitoring and Management Centre (MMC), where each and every level of the infrastructure is monitored against pre-determined thresholds to ensure any issues are identified, escalated and resolved, without impacting on the end user's experience of the site.

Consolidating the multiple infrastructures to the management of a single provider has reduced Compass Group's IT operations expenditure by a six figure sum. The complex and risky migration was completed in just 6 weeks and the cost benefits will continue to be felt. Ann Stupple, systems director at Compass Group explains,

"We can continue to effectively launch other Web sites at no extra cost as we are already paying for the servers."

There have also been clear improvements in the service levels experienced across the sites, which are now managed to a single, stringent SLA, guaranteeing a much higher availability and performance of both the external and internal sites through Attenda's proactive operational management.

Attenda's ability to take a complex and disparate group of applications, consolidate them to a single bespoke architecture and operate them to the highest service levels has slashed thousands of pounds from Compass Group's IT budget.