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More than five million customers rely on EDF Energy to supply their gas and electricity. As one of the UK’s largest energy suppliers, the company owns and manages the electricity distribution network covering London, the south and east of England. It also operates private contracts with the country’s major airports, London Underground and Canary Wharf.

EDF Energy was created in 2003 following the merging of four regional electricity companies with the EDF Group. Since then the company has not only tripled in size but also tripled the number of customer connections. In the deregulated energy sector, ensuring the company remains competitive is essential.

As Keith Funnell, client computing manager for EDF Energy, explains: “Customer service is a key differentiator for us, which means we have to be able to help the business do things quicker, cheaper and to a higher standard of quality.”

With a fragmented IT infrastructure, meeting these – and the company’s overriding goals – would have been practically impossible. “EDF Energy has defined ambitions around customer service, staff satisfaction, employee satisfaction, shareholder value and social responsibility,” says Funnell. “IT is seen as a key enabler for these ambitions and we therefore needed to establish an optimised and highly available infrastructure, which could support core customer services, such as our call centres.”

Soon after its formation, EDF Energy embarked on an ambitious service improvement initiative, which would not only transform its existing disparate IT environment but also its IT services sourcing model. As well as signing up to a three-year managed service with Computacenter, EDF Energy tasked the company with unifying its infrastructure on to a standardised Microsoft platform.

“We needed to reduce our IT support costs and improve speed of delivery for new projects,” says Funnell. “Standardisation would not only enable us to achieve these objectives but also facilitate a continuous service improvement programme for the business.”

With more than 12,000 desktops/laptops and 900 servers involved in the roll-out, expert project management and technical skills were key to the success of the project.

To minimise the risks associated with the 12-month deployment, Computacenter used proven processes and best practices that have been developed by its Shared Services Factory.

Pierre Hall, Microsoft practice leader for Computacenter, commented: “As well as ensuring that the new technologies were rolled out with minimum disruption to the business, we also needed to ensure that the infrastructure was optimised for ongoing efficiency and cost-effective management.”

Funnell comments: “Computacenter played a pivotal role in transforming infrastructure, and was responsible for designing, testing, and implementing the new environment.”

Since the project was completed in 2006, Computacenter has been supporting the infrastructure under its managed service agreement with EDF Energy. It is also continuing to use Microsoft’s core infrastructure optimisation model to help identify future initiatives that will maximise the business value of the new environment. This has already led to a pilot of Microsoft’s Office Communication Server 2007, which will enable EDF Energy to expand flexible working options for staff, thereby helping to reduce the company’s overall carbon footprint.

Enabling a responsible attitude towards the environment is just one example of how the new IT infrastructure is helping EDF Energy realise its core goals. It is also supporting the company’s mission to drive customer and shareholder value. As Funnell explains: “We have been able to consolidate our server estate by 35 per cent and sweat our existing assets more effectively. This has reduced our need to buy new servers, resulting in cost avoidance savings of approximately £100,000.”

EDF Energy hopes to be able to further decrease its operational overheads by agreeing a new service model and extended contract with Computacenter. Darryl Denton of Computacenter’s Managed Service Business comments: “We are planning to increase the value of our managed service to EDF Energy by enhancing service levels, quality and internal customer satisfaction while at the same time enabling committed cost reduction.”

The implementation has also enabled a step-change in IT management and operational efficiency at EDF Energy – for example desktop image configuration, the distribution of security patches and change management have all improved. As a result, the company has not only been able to reduce the number of malware outbreaks but also enhance IT performance.