NBN Co implements a cloud-based IT platform at unprecedented speed, to support Australias largest infrastructure project

To commence with the construction of the countrys national broadband network, a A$27 billion investment financed by the Australian government, NBN Co needed to quickly design and build the technical infrastructure necessary to support the delivery of new capabilities as well as supporting the production operations and maintenance for the companys core business capabilities. Working with Accenture, NBN Co now has an IT platform, based on cloud infrastructure, which is agile, dynamic, reduces project delivery time frames and increases flexibility. The first application release was completed within only three months, supporting the fastest ever roll-out of Oracle E-Business Suite applications.

Business situation
During 2010, the company building Australias National Broadband Network, NBN Co, was working under an aggressive timeline to establish in 14 months the companys core business capabilities: financial management, procurement management and project management; supply chain and asset management; workforce management and health and safety capabilities. NBN Co needed an IT platform that would support the design, build, test and deployment of new systems, as well as maintain the implemented applications and capabilities. Additionally, NBN Co had to provide physical desktops, network services and client operations services, and these were likely to increase significantly due to the increased number of staff. NBN Co turned to Accenture for help to quickly mobilise a team that had the technical infrastructure implementation experience. Adding to this capability,

Accenture offered a suite of cloud services that would allow a fast and flexible infrastructure for the early stages of the program.

How Accenture helped

Working together, Accenture and NBN Co developed a staggered approach to design and build the infrastructure. This consisted of two stages: first, a package standard approach was adopted to implement the IT infrastructure recommended by the third-party vendor. The main objective of this phase was to consolidate and rationalise the IT infrastructure. Then, the joint NBN Co and Accenture team opted for a virtualised private cloud strategy. This approach resulted in reduced installation requirements and hardware commissioning tasks, which in turn reduced the number of IT personnel required to maintain the system.

The team then supplied numerous production and non-production technical environments for a wide variety of applications on very short notice for the following purposes: To support the implementation of all software applications to be deployed in the future on an ongoing basis. The infrastructure was designed to be flexible in order to meet roadmap requirements for different applications that were to be delivered at different points in time. The implementation approach required 30 separate IT environments for applications implementation and integration, disaster recovery and rapidaccess delivery. To support the maintenance of the production operations. In this case, the technical infrastructure required scalability rather than flexibility. As new applications were being delivered, the predetermined infrastructure would extend to support the new capabilities vital to a growing organisation.

To help ensure that the solutions performed as intended in the production environments, the team instituted a rigorous gating process. Application development was regulated by checklists in order to verify that releases conformed to production environment standards, thus helping to ensure expedited deployment and to prevent compatibility issues.

By mid-2011, delivery time was reduced to two weeks for nonproduction environments and three weeks for production environments. Between April 2010 and October 2011, 35 Linux server environments were stood up, leveraging on 550 virtual machines and databases.

Contact
To find out more about Accenture capabilities, contact: Accenture.Direct@accenture.com or speak with your Accenture representative.

High performance delivered

NBN Co now has an IT platform, based on cloud infrastructure, that is agile and dynamic, which reduces project delivery time frames and increases flexibility. NBN Co achieved its first application release within three months from the start of the project in April 2010, supporting the fastest ever roll-out of Oracle E-Business Suite applications. Over the following 15 months, the team provided the IT infrastructure required to deliver 10 major application releases.

This case study is one of a series of seven that tell how Accenture helped build key capabilities for NBN Co. Copyright 2012 Accenture All Rights Reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.