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Collaboration supports refresh success

For years, Continental’s managed technology services were handled by a single supplier. To enhance competition, reduce costs and improve agility, Bob Edwards (pictured), Continental’s Vice President of Systems Operations, decided in 2006 to engage multiple suppliers.

Terms of engagement

With the help of an outsourcing consultant, Edwards split the managed services to be tendered out into seven categories. Edwards’ preference was to choose suppliers who, although they might be awarded only one category, were capable of competing in several categories. That way Continental wouldn’t get locked into a supplier relationship. And for their part, incumbent suppliers would understand that Continental always had an alternative.

HP had the full-spectrum capabilities Edwards was looking for, and he was already familiar with the company as Continental’s long-time prime technology provider. The airline relies on HP server blades, having standardized on ProLiant BL460c and BL480c models for its data centers and non-blade ProLiant servers for remote locations. The environment is rounded out by almost a dozen HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosures populated with BL460s, 60 quad-core and 40 dual-core HP BladeSystem p-class blades, and a mix of HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Arrays with a total capacity of about 160 terabytes. Continental also uses HP PCs and laptops.

New services

At the same time of the managed services RFP, a new “bucket” of services—Technology Services and Technology Managed Services—was drawn up by Continental to provide for the staging and implementation of the airline’s PCs, servers, network equipment and UPSs worldwide. As Continental’s hardware platform of choice, HP was the logical selection to provide these services, which embrace 281 airport sites, including hubs (major airports where the airline runs extended operations such as maintenance), and corporate headquarters. The contract involves implementing new systems, plus the associated consulting, imaging and staging that is required.

The HP close-up

Continental always looks for suppliers whose corporate culture is a good fit. “If you’re going to have conflict with suppliers, you’re looking for failure,” Edwards says. The collaborative approach proved itself once the contract was awarded. “There was a real give and take while developing the statement of work and defining what HP was going to do for us in the professional services arena. Their service team did an excellent job, suggesting some modifications, other ways of doing things. It was more than Continental coming in and saying ‘here’s what we want you to do—so what’s the price?’”

Edwards also attended the HP IT Forum, where he was able to hear HP’s IT staff describing how they run the company’s internal IT organization. “I got some real insights into HP, beyond the service delivery organization and account management teams,” he says. “It was very powerful.”

The best practices frameworks of the two companies are very similar. This was another major factor in Continental’s decision: Edwards notes that the similarity means that the managed services work can be entirely managed by HP. That in turn helps Continental to look at its system refresh processes holistically.

In the past the airline’s own staff completed all of the work at one site before moving on to the next. HP’s best practices approach allows parallel work to take place at multiple sites, an important advantage when airport authorities have final say over the type and timing of all work. Edwards says that Continental can now plan more efficiently, with a single unified work schedule for all sites.

“The choice of HP for the technology refresh was made because of HP’s depth, their standardized processes and methodology for deployments of this kind,” Edwards says. “Because of the way we operate at hundreds of airports around the world, HP’s breadth made it a good fit. It’s proving to be a natural extension of our partnership and a choice selection for multi-sourcing IT Services.”

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