Reed Consulting (UK) Limited: Consultancy Services

CASE STUDIES

"db-direct" Electronic Banking Consultant:
Frankfurt, Germany

Deutsche Bank designs and markets the leading corporate electronic banking product "db-direct". As the product became ever more successful and widespread, Deutsche Bank needed to expand its Consultancy and Support Group. As the necessary expertise was not available in Germany, Reed Consulting were asked to supply a German-speaking technical consultant for an eight-month project to provide "end-of-line" support to both internal and external customer installations.

End-of-line troubleshooting of the Systems Module of Deutsche Bank's corporate Electronic Banking software "db-direct". This included all operating system and communications problems that could not be resolved either by the local branch or by the Deutsche Bank internal Helpdesk
Support of the company's internal Electronic Banking Helpdesk, and support colleagues in Deutsche Bank branches throughout Germany and Switzerland, with occasional customer site visits where necessary
Version Control Management of db-direct, and its various externally-sourced components
Configuration and implementation of full and interim release packages of db-direct
Production of all software CDs for internal and external use
Implementation of a test room for Version 6 of db-direct
Development & maintenance of the department's software/drivers library
German/English Translation and English-language support to colleagues
Proofing of documents written in English prior to customer release
Configuration and support of an OS/2-based banking application for Deutsche Bank Amsterdam
A member of the team testing db-direct for Year-2000 compatibility

Network Server Design: EDS UK and Citibank Amsterdam, NL

EDS were commissioned by Citibank to design and implement "Global Office", a unified computing solution for all of their major European sites. EDS in turn commissioned Reed Consulting to an eight-month project to design and implement the file-and-print and application servers, with the design and testing phase based in Milton Keynes, UK and the implementation at Citibank's primary site in Amsterdam.

Development of Concept of a Global Server Design with which to implement Citibank's "Global Office" strategy in 32 major Citibank sites throughout 17 countries of Europe and in other regions. This server design utilised Novell NetWare 4.1 servers and Windows NT Workstation 4.0 clients
Design and subsequent Proof of Concept within a simulated "Model Office" test environment constructed by EDS especially for this project
Ongoing liaison with Citibank project team in UK, Citibank site management team at pilot site in Amsterdam, Citibank systems management team in various locations in the United States, Citibank Capital Markets Group, and other EDS design teams in the United States and Canada
Implementation of this design at the pilot Citibank site in Amsterdam. Due to the high profile of the project, designers were required by Citibank to be on-site to assist site transition teams in this first installation
Migration and consolidation of users and data from the site's existing NetWare 3.1x / Windows 3.1 environment to the new Global Office environment
Standardisation of all firmware to meet Year-2000 compatibility requirements
Development and implementation of secure backup/restore and anti-virus strategies
Development of a flexible and modular method of system design documentation, which was equally applicable to both business-orientated and technical readers. This methodology was subsequently adopted as the standard method of documentation design by other EDS project teams
Integration of Amsterdam servers into Citibank's Global NetWare/IP domain

Senior Consultant: London

Computacenter called on Reed Consulting to provide staff to strengthen its in-house consultancy team and provide design and troubleshooting expertise to its blue-chip customer base. These projects included:

Design, installation and documentation of the NetWare component of a Novell NetWare / Windows NT / HP-UX network for Caspian merchant bank, with provision for 250 users per site. Installation, configuration, administration and troubleshooting of Novell GroupWise, the bank's strategic communications package. Training of support personnel and back-line user support in both NetWare and GroupWise prior to and during the critical "go-live" period
Design of a new PC environment for a major magazine publisher, providing connectivity to existing Unix and Macintosh networks, while allowing migration from the existing 26 Novell NetWare servers and 800 PC workstations
Design of an Internet E-Mail solution for the Windows NT network of a major City Bank
Troubleshooting of a multi-site NetWare 4 / NetWare 3 network with roaming users
Troubleshooting of the Novell NetWare network of a major advertising house with PC and Macintosh clients. Data migration and rationalisation. Full system documentation of entire network. Training of Network Administrator

European Product Support Team,
High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, UK

SunSoft, the software division of Sun Microsystems, was seeking to expand its multi-platform, multi-discipline Product Support Team with additional expertise on the PC platform. Reed Consulting provided this expertise over a four-month period for all PC-based SunSoft products.

"Last-line" technical product support for all Intel-based software products to all SunSoft distributors in both Northern and Southern Europe
Identification of product bugs; development and provision of corresponding solutions
Liaison with Sun's Development Engineers in Mountain View, California and Boston, Massachusetts
Development of PC-NFS configuration to run under OS/2. As far as was known within Sun, this had not been done before
Provision of pre-sales on-site consultancy where linguistic skills required