Aker Yards

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Aker Yards

“Fujitsu had the capacity and capability to cater for all of our IT needs, so we would only have to manage one supplier.” Renny Salminen – Chief Information Officer, Aker Yards

Customer’s Challenge

The international ship building group Aker Yards designs and builds sophisticated vessels and is one of the world’s largest ship builders, operating 18 yards in eight countries and employing around 20,000 people. Its annual turnover has more than doubled from EUR 1.5 billion to around EUR 3.5 billion since its 2004 stockmarket listing. The group has recently had strong growth through acquisitions and restructuring, and today’s market focused structure is concentrated on three business areas: Cruise & Ferries, Merchant Vessels and Offshore and Specialised Vessels.

In Finland, Aker Yards has three ship building yards in Turku, Helsinki, and Rauma, whose IT systems were managed independently. However, the company recognised that it could streamline operations by consolidating its IT management services with one supplier.

Renny Salminen, Chief Information Officer, Aker Yards, explains, “We used to have separate service providers at each of our yards, but we knew that standardising our procedures and supplier management would save us time, effort and costs. We also wanted to outsource our data centre services and equipment, so that we could get rid of a lot of our older and smaller servers, which would have been expensive to replace, and just buy capacity instead.”

The Solution

After evaluating a range of potential partners, including its three existing suppliers, Aker Yards decided to outsource the management of its entire IT infrastructure, including 1,400 desktop systems, to Fujitsu. In addition, Fujitsu also took over the hosting and day-today operation of its data centre services, including 150 existing servers located in its Turku yard.

Renny Salminen continues, “We chose to work with Fujitsu for three reasons: firstly, Fujitsu gave us the best overall price. Secondly, Fujitsu had the capacity and capability to cater for all of our IT needs, so we would only have to manage one supplier. Finally, we evaluated the service quality and knowledge of each possible supplier and concluded that Fujitsu was the best choice overall. This was probably the most important criteria of all as we didn’t want the service to be disrupted, especially when moving our servers to the new location.”

As the new corporate services were to be provided from Fujitsu’s data centre in Helsinki a key aspect of the project was ensuring the safe migration of Aker Yards’ logical servers over to the new infrastructure provided by Fujitsu, consisting of ten, high density Blade servers.

Renny Salminen says, “The data centre migration was a very difficult task. Not only did Fujitsu have to understand and become experts in our old server farm, but it also had to work closely with many different IT suppliers and owners of the applications. To prevent any harm to our business we also wanted to avoid moving any applications during the middle of a ship building project, which can last up to two years.”

So, in order to minimise the risks and disruption to the business, Fujitsu has progressively migrated Aker Yards’ data, applications and databases to the new data centre. “We started the move just under a year ago and it’s now about 85% complete,” confirms Renny Salminen. “However, in some cases we have simply not been able to move the applications yet, because they are so old and bespoke that they are tied-in very closely to the hardware they’re running on. To get as far as we have has required a very delicate approach and a great deal of team work.”

Using its managed service operating model, called Patja in Finland, Fujitsu has also now assumed responsibility for the outsourced management of Aker Yards’ remaining IT infrastructure. The main services being provided by Fujitsu include a central IT user helpdesk, the remote management of the company’s IT systems and applications, on-site support to resolve any issues, and the tracking and management of all IT assets.

Renny Salminen says, “Fujitsu already understood our requirements well, as it has been managing the IT systems at our biggest shipyard in Turku for three years. Even so, it still had to take over and standardise the operations of the two other previous suppliers, and even independently took on some of their staff, which has helped a lot with the continuity of the service. After a few of the usual problems involved in implementing any change process, we’re now very satisfied with the day-to-day service that Fujitsu is providing.”

Fujitsu has also helped Aker Yards to deploy a global messaging system, run from Fujitsu’s data centre, that has equipped its mobile professionals with Nokia 9300 smartphones powered by the SEVEN Always-On Mail solution. The system provides secure, real-time and fully synchronised access to corporate and personal data, including email and calendars, using a push-based delivery mechanism.

Aker Yards is now investigating some possible new services with Fujitsu, including the management of its applications and procurement of all of its IT equipment. “By extending our relationship with Fujitsu there’s an opportunity to streamline our processes still further,” comments Renny Salminen, “so that we can focus on strengthening our position as a leading international supplier of modern, quality vessels.”

The Benefits

Outsourcing the management of its IT infrastructure and data centre services to Fujitsu has enabled Aker Yards to:

• Simplify supplier management – using Fujitsu as a single point of contact for all service management issues reduces management time and overhead costs
• Reduce overhead costs – there are no fixed costs for maintaining data centres or upgrading servers
• Increase business agility – services can be scaled up and down rapidly to accommodate changes in demand
• Optimise system availability – proactive system management to deliver the contracted SLAs ensures optimised IT performance and reduced downtime
• Increase productivity – faster problem resolution is minimising business disruption and enabling users to continue working longer
• Access specialist resources – Fujitsu’s extensive range of business, technical and commercial expertise is available on an ‘as needs’ basis
• Budget accurately – costs are entirely visible and predictable over the contract life
• Focus on the core business – Aker Yards can concentrate its resources on future requirements and higher value activities, rather than underlying support processes.

Renny Salminen says, “Fujitsu’s management of our IT systems means that there is less management work and fewer daily problems for our people, so that they can concentrate on developing the things that will support our future growth. The outsourcing of our data centre operations also means that we longer have to plan for any fixed capital costs, but can instead simply pay for the capacity that we actually use.”

Our Approach

Fujitsu’s managed service approach is a continuous development process through which Fujitsu assumes responsibility for the management of an organisation’s entire IT infrastructure, including applications, so that there is a single point of ownership and control.

By using a framework of proven service elements and processes Fujitsu’s approach not only reduces risk by ensuring common service standards and continuity, but also provides much greater flexibility as the service can be rapidly scaled up or down to meet the evolving needs of the business, such as extending the service hours.

Our Expertise

Fujitsu has been delivering consistently high levels of service to the public sector and businesses around the world for more than 30 years. Its support services, procedures and infrastructure are constantly being refined to meet the evolving needs of customers, and ensure that they can be delivered effectively and economically.

“Fujitsu’s ICT capability is excellent – it has a lot of knowledge and experience and you can always find an expert for everything,” explains Renny Salminen. “Our relationship with Fujitsu’s people is also very good. Like any good partnership it is open and honest and we can discuss everything, even though we may not always agree!”