Unisys & Sabesp
Breakthrough: Sabesp Modernizes Service Delivery Using a Real-Time Infrastructure
Imagine it.
Improve customer service with better online capabilities, enhance business security, and bolster storage capacity using a real-time environment and a dedicated backup site, and enhance overall performance with increased processing power.

 

Done.
Sabesp chose Unisys ClearPath Plus Dorado Model 380 servers to create a real-time infrastructure that addresses government mandates for improved delivery of services to customers both online and on-site, while enhanced storage capacity and better processing performance help ensure business continuance.

 

Results: Better Customer Service, Secure Business Growth

Sabesp uses secure, mission-critical ClearPath Plus Dorado Model 380 servers and Unisys Enterprise Application Environment (EAE) development tools to enable business growth, improve customer service, increase security, and optimize resources.

 

Metrics

Business Challenge: Ensure High Service Levels and Security in a Growing Business

With over 25 million customers, Companhia de Saneamento Basico do Estado de Sao Paulo (Sabesp) – the State of Săo Paulo, Brazil’s basic sanitation company – is the largest organization of its kind in Latin America, and the fourth largest worldwide. It earned this impressive ranking by sparing no effort to maintain high-quality services since its inception in 1973.

 

In order to continue providing the best service to its thousands of commercial and residential customers – and to ensure the highest levels of business security moving forward – Sabesp relies on a leading-edge technology infrastructure. When the company saw that its old server was reaching its capacity limits, Sabesp looked to longtime technology partner, Unisys, to conduct an in-depth review of its IT environment in light of its fast-growing business and future requirements.

 

As Sabesp CIO, Fernando Menezes, explains, “We needed to address several critical goals: to support Sabesp’s growth, strengthen our business continuity position, improve customer service, increase security, and optimize resources.”

 

Solution: A Modernized, Real-Time IT Infrastructure Powered by Unisys Servers

After a thorough analysis of Sabesp’s current infrastructure, as well as its near- and long-term plans, Unisys recommended a solution using two ClearPath Plus Dorado Model 380 servers.

 

“Unisys is a trusted partner. Because the Unisys team has always been dedicated to meeting Sabesp’s needs, we didn’t consider competitive solutions,” says Menezes. “We contracted with Unisys to create a backup site and update our storage environment, as well. As a result of this project, we will continue to benefit from Unisys high degree of professionalism and outstanding technology solutions.”

 

With Unisys help, Sabesp has replaced its Unisys ClearPath CS7802 server with a Unisys ClearPath Plus Dorado Model 380 platform. The server supports Sabesp’s mission-critical production business applications for the company’s commercial, administrative, and financial areas – as well as its development and test environments. The solution also upgraded Sabesp’s EMC storage area network (SAN) to include new EMC® CLARiiON® and Symmetrix® storage platforms.

 

Sabesp’s high-availability remote backup system – located at the Unisys Outsourcing Datacenter in Veleiros, Brazil – offers business continuance in case of a disaster through a second Unisys ClearPath Plus Dorado Model 380 server.

 

What’s more, all of Sabesp’s mission-critical applications are written using Unisys Enterprise Application Environment (EAE). Sabesp’s commitment to this highly productive, proven toolset is clear; the company has 50 developers on-site using EAE. Sabesp also has deployed Java applications on open server platforms that are integrated with systems running on its ClearPath Dorado server.

 

Finally, Sabesp is using a Unisys ES7000/540 server running Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, to support such key solutions as Microsoft SQL Server 2000, Lotus Notes Applications and Mail Server, and the Microsoft IIS web server.

 

Results: Faster, More Flexible Service Delivery Fuels Business Growth

Sabesp is enjoying impressive results since upgrading its IT infrastructure using Unisys ClearPath Plus Dorado servers, including:

With the new ClearPath Dorado servers, processing power has increased by 58 percent. “On average, our servers run 2 million transactions daily, with very high availability rates. With our previous system, 99.4 percent of transactions were processed in under two seconds. Today, we provide a sub-second rate,” says Menezes. Plus, with the new ClearPath Dorado Model 380 environment, batch runs complete 30 percent faster.

 

In order to ensure convenient access to services, the San Paulo state government ordered all customer services to be provided at both physical offices and online by late 2007. Menezes reports, “Today, customers can handle most requests online. We average 640,000 self-service transactions daily. We expect to bring 100 percent of our services online by the fourth quarter of 2007.”

 

Meanwhile, Sabesp’s new backup site improves the organization’s disaster recovery preparedness. “Our new backup site is a corporate imperative that supports our real-time operations and provides a guarantee of business continuity for our shareholders and organization as a whole,” says Menezes.

 

In addition, the new infrastructure improved data security using a leading-edge Sun StorageTek SL8500 Tape Library. “This system is modular in design and able to manage up to 10,000 tapes. Today, we use 1,300 tapes, each with a 20-Gigabyte capacity. In addition, we have historical information stored on 25,000 tapes that will be moved to very high-capacity tapes and DVDs. This conversion effort will improve security, as well as reduce the overall storage footprint,” comments Menezes.

 

What’s more, thanks to its recent upgrade to EAE’s modern, workstation-based development environment running under the Microsoft Windows operating environment, Sabesp has seen its application maintenance costs go down. EAE developers are now even more productive, so Sabesp can do more without increasing staff size. In addition, Sabesp recently completed re-development of several aging COBOL-based financial and administrative applications using EAE.

 

We’ve relied on Unisys expertise for more than 40 years because the company continually adds value to Sabesp’s business and helps us ensure better service to our customers. 
Fernando Menezes
CIO
Sabesp

The Relationship: Decades of Partnership Value

Now that Sabesp has deployed a modernized infrastructure to support ongoing business growth – and has successfully improved both its quality of service and security – it is looking to Unisys to help establish a service-oriented architecture based on industry best practices and featuring web-based applications. “We’ve relied on Unisys expertise for more than 40 years because the company continually adds value to Sabesp’s business and helps us ensure better service to our customers. I expect that trend to continue,” confirms Menezes.

 

Profile: Sabesp

Solution at a Glance

 

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