Customer Focus: Servisair-GlobeGround Servisair-GlobeGround is one of the world's largest independent ground handling companies. Servisair handles over 50 million passengers for 375 airline customers and has 12,000 employees managing more than 600,000 aircraft movements per year. Background Commercial aircraft operate 24 hours a day across all but one of the world's continents. These aircraft carry both passengers and freight, which must be attended to on a 24-hour basis for 365 days of the year. To operate efficiently, Servisair relies upon a complex system and network environment, housed at Anite Managed Services' high security data centre and 15 Servisair transit sheds, located at airports across the UK. Critical Business Issues Due to new directives issued by UK Customs & Excise, mandating the need for release authority for all future export consignments, Servisair needed to upgrade their Airport Bureau System (ABS). This upgrade will enable freight consignments to be loaded, shipped, billed and consigned in accordance with these new export directives. This had to be completed by mid-2003. Any error or slow down in the cargo shipment process could mean outbound freight missing its shipping slot and subsequent delivery time. To ensure compliance with these new regulations, Servisair-GlobeGround also needed to upgrade their computer servers, their communications network and the supporting IT infrastructure. They called on Abtech Computer Services UK to manage and perform this upgrade. The Solution The key part of this solution was maintaining service throughout the rollout. Once the process had been completed, the solution needed to be resilient enough to remain running despite component failures. In order to achieve this Abtech employed the following methodology:   The systems were clustered using HPs MC/ServiceGuard High Availability solution.   Abtech supplied a loan server to ensure that the system remained online throughout the implementation.   A thorough testing program was carried out to test the solution in a range of component failure scenarios. The project was managed throughout by Abtech's senior systems engineers who also produced a full package of documentation on the solution.

The Results Although some challenging incidents have been encountered, the implementation team, comprising technical staff from Servisair-GlobeGround, ABS, Abtech and Anite Managed Services, have continued to manage the upgrade program with minimal downtime. As a result of careful planning, new features have been implemented and introduced to Servisair-GlobeGround's user community without any significant disruption to the day-to-day operation of the transit sheds. The users, whose systems are being continually upgraded, experience minimal inconvenience. Why Abtech? Abtech worked with Servissair and ABS to size the systems required for the project. Once the HPUX platform had been chosen Abtech were the obvious choice. They have the skills in both HPUX, MC/Serviceguard and HP Storage. They were able to provide the total solution from Project Management to supplying the loan servers. Company Profile Ground Handling Company Their Requirement - Meet new Customs & Excise requirements Our Solution - Upgrade IT infrastructure - Provide High Availability solution Benefits - Minimal downtime and user inconvenience - On-going testing and control - Assured System Availability Technology & Services - 24/7 Infrastructure Support - HP9000 L1000 Enterprise Servers - HP-UX O/S with ServiceGuard Cluster Software Web Site http://www.servisair.com