Atkins, a leading engineering consultancy, collaborated with 1e to implement SMS 2003, enabling efficient patch management and software distribution across 12,000 computers. This new system significantly reduced system downtime, improved application deployment, and lowered maintenance costs, allowing the IT team to focus on more strategic tasks. The successful partnership was attributed to prior collaboration, expertise, and the capacity to adapt to project changes.

1. Case Study - Systems Management Services
1E Helps Atkins Patch 12,000 PCs In A Day
Atkins faced an IT enterprise management challenge. 1E helped the successful engineering firm to fast-track a new SMS
2003 system that makes software licensing, patching and distribution far easier and more efficient. The result for the
business is an updated, secure and legislation-compliant infrastructure – and, for the IT team, free time to concentrate on
more interesting things.
Customer profile
With a turnover of £1.2 billion, Atkins is the UK’s largest
Solutions Overview
engineering consultancy and the world’s seventh largest design
firm. The company plans, designs and enables complex capital Project Requirements
projects in the public and private sectors. Atkins required an enterprise management system to
keep its infrastructure updated, secure and legislation-
The challenge compliant:
The Atkins IT team was doing an exceptional job maintaining its • Automated management of 12,000 machines across
12,000 computers. But aspects of the overall management of the 90 branches
estate were causing concern. “Essentially, we had a big hole in the
• Rapid application distribution
enterprise management arena,” says Atkins Windows Architect,
Brad Smith. • Successful and faster patch management
• Minimize system downtime
Working with 1E, Atkins identified three main challenges:
• Save administration costs
Software licensing
In a company of Atkins’s size, software costs run into millions. Solution Summary
It’s vital to be able to see that licenses are being fully utilized,
and never breached. Atkins chose SMS 2003 for software licensing compliance,
patch management and application distribution, selecting
Software patching 1E specifically for:
If you cannot apply critical software patches promptly, across
multiple sites and teams, systems become non-secure. In the • Technology expertise
worst case scenario, that means sending staff home. • Site design ability
Application distribution • Development and implementation skills
With no automatic distribution method, application • Solutions that reduce extra hardware requirements
distribution is another major headache for system managers.
Manually copying applications around the network was eating Services delivered
man hours.
• Six-week project plan
With all these challenges, it was clear Atkins needed a new, more • Full delivery - two days early
automated approach to enterprise management.
• Complete skills upgrade of internal Atkins staff
• Full project documentation for future reference
The solution
1E and Atkins identified SMS 2003 as the software best placed Key Benefits
to answer these challenges. Deployed properly according to a
tailored design, SMS would provide automated, transparent and • Guaranteed software license compliance
time-saving answers to each of the problem areas identified. • Improved corporate asset management
The consulting team’s first step was to focus on developing a • Decreased patch deployment effort from two weeks
concise, high-level design, followed rapidly by a detailed plan. to a day
The team was then able to define business processes to make best • Automated application distribution and deployment
use of SMS, and set up the system in compliance with Atkins’s
• Substantial cost savings
demanding internal standards.

2. Case Study - Systems Management Services
The benefits
The benefits of the new system are already clear.
System downtime greatly reduced. Patches and updates are now applied in a more timely fashion, allowing employees to work
more of the time. “Under our old system, we took around a week to develop the means to deploy a patch, then a further week to
actually deploy it to all the client systems,” says Brad. “The new system allows us to develop patches in minutes, and deploy them
within one day.”
More efficient application deployment. “We used to manually copy applications around the network, and we had two or three
people pretty much doing that full time. The system 1E put together distributes applications for us, freeing time for more interesting
and useful tasks.”
Maintenance costs down. “Our system maintenance costs have gone down significantly because we patch much more rapidly, we’ve
automated application distribution, and the SMS reporting console has enabled a medium-sized team of around eight people to
actually analyze the information rather than spending their entire time collecting the data.”
Beyond the brief
While the initial brief was largely to do with the SMS installation, Brad feels Atkins has benefited just as much from 1E’s expertise
with MOM and general security issues. “Having someone who can multitask in the way our 1E consultants have is great. What’s
more, their overall expertise has made it easy for them to spot and solve problems that are common to different aspects of our IT
system. It’s the clear view from outside the organization.”
The general experience of the 1E consultants also proved a boon when the project definition changed midway through. Having built
in flexibility from the start, the 1E team was able quickly to adapt the original design, without needing to make any major changes.
Why 1E was chosen
Atkins had worked with 1E on a previous project, creating goodwill between the companies. Add in a recommendation from
Microsoft and 1E’s SMS extended solution set for SMS, and 1E was the natural choice.
“The implementation of SMS 2003 by 1E has enabled Atkins to continue using its computer system as a secure, sustainable and
managed framework. SMS has provided a great technical solution, and 1E has proved an excellent technical enabler, ensuring we
make full and rational use of the facilities of SMS. The two together have given us an excellent solution.” Brad Smith, Windows
Architect, Atkins
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