Background
Case Study in .pdf Format (Acrobat File)
March 2001
British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced in September 2000 that his government would use the Internet to knit British citizens and their government closer together. The project was named Government Gateway. Specifically, Blair's U.K. online initiative seeks to ensure country-wide access to the Internet, get all government departments and agencies online, and make Britain one of the world's leading knowledge economies - all by the year 2005.
Challenge
The U.K. government set a widely publicized timeline for implementing its technology initiatives. Work on the Government Gateway project began in June 2000, but the original vendor withdrew from the project four months later. Microsoft was then appointed lead developer. At that point, Microsoft was given a clean slate to create a technical solution that would meet the requirements laid out by the Cabinet Office. For the Government Gateway, the Cabinet Office selected Microsoft® Windows® 2000 for its ease of deployment, its high levels of integration with the various applications and the availability of skills to build and manage the service, says Alan Mather, project manager for the Government Gateway, U.K. Cabinet Office. The project was started on October 1, 2000, with a delivery date of January 25, 2001. We had ambitious deadlines and needed to deploy quickly.
Solutions
Dell's Advanced Systems Group and Microsoft's Consulting Services teamed up to quickly develop and deploy a robust e-Government infrastructure based on the Microsoft.NET platform and DellTM PowerEdgeTM servers and PowerVaultTM storage products - and they did it in weeks, instead of months, in order to meet the British government's target date.
Not only was Dell designing a system that was unprecedented in size and complexity, but it also incorporated relatively new software components, including Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Biztalk Server 2000, SQL Server 2000 and Commerce Server 2000, Mather adds. Dell designed a very complex hardware solution with very short notice.
To meet scalability requirements, Dell specified processor resource, memory, network bandwidth, storage, and backup to accommodate the governments expected initial use of the system - plus 50 percent headroom. Each major component was specified with inherent upgradeability, and storage had massive 'plug-and-play' expandability. The hardware design also took into account the government's future intention to deploy Microsoft Windows 2000 Data Center in place of Windows Advanced Server and to expand the system to multiple remote disaster recovery sites.
To meet availability requirements, Dell recommended clustered systems and components with build-in redundancy, including arbitrated loop controllers, battery-backed cache, RAID disc controllers, hot-spare disks, dual-port network cards and n+1 power supplies.
Dell built, shipped, and delivered 118 Dell PowerEdge servers and eight complete Storage Area Network (SAN) systems one week ahead of the committed schedule. In all, Dell delivered 500 individual orders that arrived at multiple delivery sites. Delivery was based on a pre-determined order to expedite installation.
When Dell quoted a delivery date of 15 days, we were astonished, Mather says. How could they build all this high-end equipment so quickly? We thought it was crazy. Then the equipment arrived at our data centers after only ten days.
Results
The Government Gateway offers citizens and businesses a single authentication service for all government transactions. The Gateway is the cornerstone of the government's e-information system, enabling citizens to communicate and make secure transactions with all areas of government from a single entry point..
The Dell infrastructure for the Government Gateway is designed to handle up to 500 transactions per second and up to five billion transactions per year, according to Mather. To accomplish our goals, we needed a solid, stable infrastructure that was robust, resilient and scalable, Mather explains. The Dell team was able to quickly think through the challenge, design a solution, and refine it. We needed a system that was always on and could scale from a few initial transactions to potentially several billion per year. We needed to be able to scale to add new services and departments and to stack new hardware and software to manage those transactions.
As more government agencies are brought onto the Government Gateway, more online government services will be available - everything from renewing driver's licenses to tracking benefits payments.
This project was on time, on budget and on scope, Mather says. We would never have done this without Dell; I don't know of another partner that could have stepped up and delivered that quickly.
March 2001
