Arcelor IT – November 29, 2004 – n°10
Mainframe Infrastructure Optimisation Project: Sidmar-ALZ Transfer, first great success! An adventure started, one year ago Context Arcelor Mainframes under direct management were originally situated on 4 sites: Avilés (Aceralia), Sagunto (Sidmed), Gent (Sidmar) and Dunkerque (TXT T). In 2003, Arcelor Group decided to launch a study to define the optimum architecture for the mainframe domain to reduce costs in hardware, software, maintenance and operations at Group level.
The results of the IT consulting business study showed that by merging its IT Mainframe operations, Arcelor could save close to 20% of its mainframe budget by 2006. The Mainframe MIO Project was born and integrated in the Programme GO4IT, which aims at leveraging synergies in the IT domain.
Scope and organization: The MIO main objective was to develop and sustain the merger synergies across countries trough integration and rationalization of its actual Mainframe Infrastructures in: - Hardware through economies of scale, - Software through consolidation and rationalization, - Organization through simplification of the environment.
As soon as the business case was approved and ready for execution Tixis, Sidmar and ALZ came together frequently. The first meeting was held on Jan 5th 2004 and the complete project was divided
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in manageable subprojects, coordinated by Eddie Van Lierde from IT Platform, with the support of all the local Teams and Managers (Jean Pierre DeVreese for Sidmar and Régis Delrue for Tixis). Major project milestones are the mainframe transfers, of which the first one (Sidmar/ALZ) was successfully carried out on October 30th.
Account of October 30th, the D-Day The 30th of October was the D-DAY. Everything had been prepared before, to assure the success of the Transfer. With the accumulated knowledge gathered during the project, Alex Van Guyt wrote the final detailed scenario, which was executed October the 30th. Igor Leprêtre from TXT T assured the coordination between Dunkerque and Sidmar. The transfer process could be followed live on the Sidmar Intranet which enabled all users to consult the exact status Preparation started at midnight and at 6:00AM: the Sidmar computers went down for ever. Disks with all data and the appropriate cassettes were moved to Dunkerque and Mardyck and at 1:35 PM Sidmar-ALZ applications started to run on Arcelor computers using several telecommunication lines between all involved sites. After the move, Day 1 needed to be ensured. Marc Van de Woestijne (Sidmar) and Daniel Maizi (TXT) prepared during several weeks the Day 1 taking into account every aspects and details. The migration went smooth and this first success is the result of a combined team, Tixis – Sidmar – ALZ and the IT platform, and months of hard work and precise preparation.
Lessons learned from the experience MIO represents the first ‘global’ IT change project within Arcelor. Before the MIO Project, there was no history of major technology change management involving different entities of the Group and mobilizing synergies and resources around a common project. After one year, the teams learnt to appreciate their differences (cultural, professional, ..), and to work together as a real close team. Arcelor can be really proud of this first success and it can be hoped that this cooperation continues in the future to improve the quality of our services and organization.
Next steps After the successful October 30th 2004 transfer of ALZ and Sidmar, the challenge for the next few months will be to succeed the remaining milestones: the Aceralia and Sagunto Transfers to happen on January 22nd and February 23 th respectively. Should you have further inquiries on the project or would like to know more about the experience, please contact Eddie Van Lierde (
[email protected]), project manager. This newsletter is published by the Arcelor Corporate IT Platform:
[email protected] You can find us on www.arcelor.info \ Services Corporate \ Arcelor IT
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