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TalkTalk Direct gets faster on its feet
Case study: How a major server upgrade has seen efficiency rocket

By Tim Ferguson

Published: Thursday 11 October 2007

TalkTalk Direct has upgraded its enterprise server infrastructure, speeding up bill processing and cutting energy consumption.

The business process outsourcing division of Carphone Warehouse upgraded to Fujitsu Siemens Primepower servers to run its core systems - including CRM, billing and reporting apps - between August last year and January 2007.

Since installing the new servers, the company has seen an 88 per cent reduction in the time needed to generate information on customer billing.

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Gordon Perry, IT director at TalkTalk Direct, said it was clear that the company's old servers, installed three or four years ago, could not support business growth.

With the upgrade, the IT team had to make sure operations and customer service were not affected and ensure the infrastructure was future-proofed for further growth.

Initial reports showed the average time to run the daily billing reports dropped from four and a half hours to just 30 minutes - a reduction of 20 hours per week.

Perry told silicon.com this means customer bills can be printed and posted the same day, reducing the time between billing and receiving payment.

The cost of running the infrastructure has also been reduced. Perry said: "One of the key advantages was a lower cost of ownership."

With the switch to the new servers Perry said the company is on course to save £120,000 per year on software and support.

The energy footprint has also been reduced - the company estimates it has cut power consumption by around 40 per cent.

For disaster recovery, the company installed replica servers at its data centre in Birmingham, which mirror those at its Northampton HQ.

These replica servers can also be used for test and development work to make sure apps are resilient before they are rolled out across the company.

Perry said that now the new servers are in place, the company intends to expand its disaster recovery to provide full continuity.