India's #1 Car Maker Deploys CA's Unicenter TNG
21 June 1999
Unicenter TNG Cuts Costs and Improves Service
Maruti Udyog Integrates Point Solutions to Gain End-To-End Management of
Networked Multiplatform IT Environment
NEW DELHI, India, and ISLANDIA, N.Y -- Computer Associates International,
Inc. today announced that Maruti Udyog Ltd., India's largest automobile maker,
has selected CA's Unicenter TNG to improve management of its expanding network
while boosting service levels and reducing operational costs.
MUL, a joint venture between the government of India and Japan's Suzuki
Motor Corp., has the largest automobile distribution network in the country,
with 188 showrooms, 240 dealer workshops and more than 1,000 authorized
service stations in 510 cities. MUL's computer network tightly links its
dealers and factory, allowing the company to manufacture and quickly deliver
cars in response to individual orders from dealers.
To help ensure the reliability and integrity of this business-critical
network, MUL needed a centralized management solution that would bridge the
company's diverse computing platforms and systems, enabling IT staff to
monitor all applications and supporting infrastructure resources in real time.
Those diverse systems include Intel-based servers and desktops. Applications
running on the network include Oracle, Microsoft Exchange and CAD/CAM
software.
MUL evaluated IBM/Tivoli TME and HP OpenView before selecting Unicenter
TNG. "Unicenter TNG came out of our rigorous evaluation process with flying
colors," said Rajesh Uppal, specialist, marketing and sales information, IT
division at MUL. "It was the only solution with an integrated approach for
managing all the various components of our network."
Uppal also cited ease of use, seamless third-party integration and the
ability to quickly respond to system events as other key factors that weighed
heavily in favor of Unicenter TNG.
"Given its proven ability to manage events proactively and to quickly
identify and help resolve exception events, we are confident that Unicenter
TNG will help MUL meet its technology management requirements while reducing
the total cost of IT operations," Uppal said.
Unicenter TNG will give MUL technicians the ability to view and control
network events from all applications and subsystems on a centralized console.
Response Manager will be used to gather network history data that, in turn,
will drive proactive problem solving and dynamic performance monitoring.
Asset management will help the company keep track of its hardware and software
inventory, which has always been a challenge given the geographical
distribution of the company's IT resources.
In the past, MUL used a number of point solutions, including POLYCENTER
Console Manager, Cisco's CiscoWorks and assorted BMC tools. This fragmented
approach reduced the efficiency of IT operations and led to difficulties in
pinpointing the root cause of performance problems.
With Unicenter TNG, MUL technicians will be able to integrate the various
point solutions currently in place and consolidate all the network data they
generate to a centralized console in real time. "Using Unicenter TNG, network
outages and other exception events can be traced back to their source and
resolved quickly so that our service level agreements can be maintained,"
Uppal said.
With the Unicenter TNG Advanced Help Desk (AHD) Web Interface, the systems
department at MUL also expects to significantly enhance service levels. By
using AHD's Web Interface, systems engineers can access the help desk from
anywhere on the network, allowing them to respond to trouble tickets instantly
regardless of whether they are at their desks or not.
AHD's capabilities are also being leveraged to create a variety of non-IT
applications that improve other key business processes. For example, MUL is
launching a vehicle-tracking application based on AHD that tracks every
vehicle on an end-to-end basis throughout the manufacturing life cycle. By
providing an intelligent repository for this data, AHD is empowering MUL to
deliver a better product to its customers. "This is all part of MUL's overall
strategy to stay ahead of the intense competition in the automobile
manufacturing market in India," Uppal said.
"Because Maruti Udyog uses technology so effectively to maximize
profitability and customer satisfaction, its approach to managing that
technology is business-critical," said Venkat Subbarao, managing director, CA
India. "The company's extension of Unicenter TNG AHD to support its
manufacturing process is a great example of how to leverage an investment in
software and application-related skills."
Computer Associates International, Inc., the world leader in mission-critical
business computing, provides software, support and integration services in
more than 100 countries around the world. CA has more than 14,000 employees and
had revenue of $5.3 billion in fiscal year 1999.
Maruti Udyog Ltd. is a $2.1 billion manufacturer of automobiles for the
Indian market. It is a joint venture between the government of India and
Japan's Suzuki Motors Corp. The first automobiles rolled off MUL's assembly
lines in 1983 and within a very short period it emerged as the first Indian
company to produce 1 million vehicles. In 1998, it manufactured more than
350,000 automobiles. For more information, visit the company's Web site at
http://www.marutiudyog.com.
All referenced product names are trademarks of their respective companies.