The Customer
As one of the leading vendors of components for interior design of automobiles our reference customer is part of the international market. With approximately 1.500 employees, the company distinguishes itself by its customer-oriented service centers and manufacturing plants all over the world.

The Challenge
With a medium-sized company in the area of automotive with more than 1.500 work stations there are many challenges in the area of Application Lifecycle Management, especially, if the IT infrastructure has grown over the years. Over the years, stand-alone and heterogenic structure develop and their confusing structures hide their own obstacles.

Because of this, the company decided to outsource this highly responsible service to our partner Bechtle. It was the obvious thing to do, to consider the migration to Windows as a part of this. As a reliable company, we were called upon to plan and execute this migration project.

It was important to get an overview of all machines as well as applications that existed in the company, to avoid unplanned delays and unpredictable costs for the migration. Furthermore, there was the question which of the software applications that were in use were needed and suitable for the new target platform.

The Solution
With Raynet’s collision and compatibility management, as well as the 7-step-method Dirroci, not only a software portfolio analyses was created, but also a safe and reliable provision of applications for the new operating system was guaranteed.

The first thing to do was, to get an overview of all machines and application in the company. In only two work days, discovery, inventory as well as software recognition of 1.500 devices had been carried out with the use of RayVentory Advanced. The result, which was delivered as an overall report, showed 2.000 software applications with a diversity of product versions which had been inventoried.

It took only five more work days to elaborate and define a future software strategy which resulted in a rationalization of nearly 70 % of the software, which consisted mostly of redundant versions, languages, and functions. The result of the consolidation were 250 standardized software packages which had to be check for compatibility with the target platform. The outcome of this cleansing was, that only those applications which were to be used on Windows 10, were tested for compatibility with the new operating system.

After the strategy and the elaboration for the target scenario had been added to overall report, the compatibility tests with Windows 10 for all relevant software packages had also been executed within 5 working days. This was done independently by our collision and compatibilty solution RayQC Advanced.

After this, we were able to concentrate on the evaluation, software packaging, and the corresponding quality assurance of the approximately 250 defined software applications for Windows 10 and the preparation of the distribution with the new SCCM-infrastructure. The whole packaging process was carried out in only 8 weeks.

Customer Advantages
By this approach not only resources were saved, but it also prevented unnecessary efforts. This considerable rationalization of unused or unnecessary software leads to enormous cost savings in each single phase of the whole Application Lifecycle Management, even in the future.

Conclusion
By integrating the services and products of Raynet, this project was executed successfully and according to schedule. The smooth cooperation with our partner Bechtle and our common customer was also crucial for this success.

Solution
Dirroci – the 7-step-method

1. Machine Discovery
2. Software Inventory
3. Application Recognition
4. Application Rationalization
5. Application OS Collision Detection
6. Application Collision Remediation
7. Application Integration Detection