Project: Unicenter SOLUTION Client: GSA
	Solution Summary The General Services Administration needed an enterprise software solution to help them achieve the following: Monitor their Enterprise Network. Ability to manage their hardware and software assets. Automatic software distribution to the desktops. Remotely take control of machines. Help Desk system Computer Associates (CA) -Unicenter was adopted by GSA. 3H Technology (3H) worked closely with CA to provide the implementation of Unicenter.

CHALLENGE
A successful business requires that all its components function smoothly and in unison. The fast pace of the technology world makes it imperative that for a business to be successful, information must be kept up to date in a fast and reliable way, information must be shared and processes automated across functions. These are not simple tasks independent of each other, and create even more of a challenge when having to function in an integrated fashion. Managing desktops and their users can be a demanding, costly and labor-intensive process especially when you have thousands of users. GSA wanted a solution that could answer the following questions: Current existing hardware and software used by our users? Does it meet our standards? What should be my IT budget next year? Are my users getting fast and reliable support? How can we push a software package to all users without having to manually touch every user’s machine? Can we preempt network outages?

IT support is judged on how smoothly things run and how quickly problems are resolved. A total inventory control of software and hardware is crucial in projecting needed budgets. The overall challenge therefore was to implement an enterprise solution that encompasses software distribution, asset management, network monitoring, and a help desk system.

SOLUTION
3H implemented CA Advanced Help Desk (AHD) for GSA, PBS NCR in October of 2001. In January of 2002, 3H implemented CA-Unicenter TNG to provide enterprise management control over GSA’s current infrastructure. This TNG implementation included 3 major software modules: Software Delivery Option (SDO), Asset Management Option (AMO), and Remote Control Option (RCO). In addition, Unicenter TNG integrated fully with AHD. The main module of Unicenter TNG is an enterprise monitoring tool. It manages the health and availability of the operating systems and infrastructure elements such as network devices, business applications and databases. A powerful auto-discovery function creates 2D and 3D dynamic visualizations of your enterprise network. Triggers can be set to alert you for potential bottlenecks and or failures so preemptive action can be taken avoiding user down time. The Software Delivery Option (SDO) builds, distributes, installs and manages software packages on target systems. The Asset Management Option (AMO) is a tool used to manage your IT assets in a heterogeneous environment. It automates the process of collecting all hardware and software inventory throughout the enterprise. The Remote Control Option (RCO) is a secure application to remote control user’s machines (Windows 3.1, 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, Millennium) through network access (dialup or the Internet). Unicenter’s RCO was designed with management and security in mind; it simplifies administration by enabling the administrator to easily configure all clients centrally from a single management console.

Implementing CA-Unicenter for a large and complex environment such as GSA’s required a great deal of customization in order for the application to work optimally. The constant roaming of GSA’s users posed an issue of keeping the AMO and SDO databases accurate. When users moved from one field site to another duplicate entries were being created. Our Engineers were forced to manually update the databases. 3H worked closely with CA and wrote scripts eliminating a majority of the manual work required earlier. As a result, following implementation and customization, Unicenter has helped GSA reap the following benefits:

• Helping control software costs by metering software usage, allowing you to only buy what you need.
  
• Improving service levels by providing better information about hardware, software and configurations, and by notifying the Helpdesk when problems are detected.
  
• Reducing the total cost of ownership by minimizing the need to visit individual desktops for routine management of the environment.
  
• Improving end-user productivity by providing consistent system configurations and minimizing desktop downtime.
  
• Minimizing down-time by continually monitoring the health of the environment.