Ensuring quality customer service with efficiency is not an easy task for Maynilad Water Services, Inc. which serves 8.9-million customers across 17 cities and municipalities in the West Zone of the Greater Manila area.
With 35 different applications (SAP, MS, CRM, to name a few), one server, and no structured cabling, it was impossible for the water concessionaire to raise the level of customer service and efficiency.
Dr. Francisco Castillo, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Maynilad, shares that aside from incurring high operating costs and under-utilized resources, the capital- and labor-intensive IT model they had was inadequately equipped to support the firm’s response to increasing demand and application use.
Dr Francisco Castillo, SVP and CIO, Maynilad
To overcome the challenge of ensuring a minimal downtime and a fast response time in addressing the needs of its customers, Maynilad consolidated its servers, upgraded its routers and switches, and deployed virtualization in 2012.
With VMware vSphere as the platform, the company was able to consolidate its existing IT infrastructure that resulted in significant improvements in customer delivery by at least 50%, better resource management, and reduction in wastage.
This implementation not only allowed for more accurate and flexible storage allocation that reduces provisioning of servers from days to minutes, it also enabled faster response time using lesser resources and enhanced support more than four times the number of servers and at least 1.5 times the number of applications.
Lowering costs while raising level of efficiency
Castillo said that through server consolidation, Maynilad has been able to reduce operation costs; achieve faster server deployment and migration with minimal downtime and disruptions; and become flexible in assigning resources to different applications.
Castillo adds that with server consolidation, Maynilad has avoided over-allocation of storage and server needs; and has experienced faster storage and easier backup.
With the improvement in its IT infrastructure, Maynilad operations became more efficient, and personnel can now respond faster to water supply concerns of customers. The company now provides 24-hour water supply to 99.98% of its concession area.
The concessionaire’s efforts to reduce water losses became easier with the support of key applications in place including leak management, enabling it to recover over 863-million liters of treated water, with a 34% reduction in wastage.
“Customer service is extremely important to our business, and in an on-demand world, expectations for faster and quality service has become a key. Through the deployment of VMware vSphere, Maynilad is able to more precisely determine and respond to customer demands with the agility, speed and flexibility to scale applications and support necessary to ensure faster response time. We are now better equipped with the infrastructure to optimize resources and IT investments, reduce wastage, and ensure accuracy and timely billing to better serve our customers,” said Castillo.
Today, Maynilad is equipped with virtual servers numbering more than 190, over 40 applications and more than 2,000 endpoints, and eight IT and 34 outsourced personnel.
A buoyant future
Aside from consolidating its systems, the company also deployed a robust networking foundation from which to support its expanding business operations.
Maynilad chose Extreme Networks to deploy wired and wireless solutions enterprise-wide, covering the head office, data center, and 15 branches and pumping stations.
“Users and devices at Maynilad’s different locations can now connect to the network via core or edge switches at each office. As a result, they are able to communicate and share information more seamlessly,” Dr. Castillo said. “Thanks to the role-based access control (RBAC), we can now centrally manage and control the security posture of all devices connecting to the network. It monitors and restricts access to our confidential customer and corporate data, so we can assure customers of the integrity of their information.”
To date, 182 switches and 71 access points have been deployed across Maynilad’s network. The solution included Extreme Networks Summit x460s, which provide high density Gigabit Ethernet in a very small 1RU. Supported by the ExtremeXOS system, they can simplify network operations and offer high scalability.
Outstanding CIO
Dr. Castillo has been actively improving Maynilad’s IT infrastructure over the years. Because of this, he was selected by IDG, from over 450 IT professionals, as one of the most outstanding CIOs in the ASEAN region.
He is also the first in the Philippines to receive the Portfolio Management Professional (PfMP) certificate from the Project Management Institute, the world’s leading non-profit professional membership association for the project, program and portfolio management profession.
With a virtualized infrastructure, a robust network, and Dr. Castillo’s passion for efficiency, Maynilad is now more than prepared to take on its future challenges.—With notes from Melba Bernad
