The instant call center. Scaling to increased customer service demand, yet simplifying the underlying IT infrastructure
China Eastern Airlines is one of China’s top three state-owned airlines, serving nearly 80 million passengers annually with flights to 187 different countries and over 1,000 destinations worldwide. China Eastern Airlines ranks as the 5th largest airline globally in terms of passenger volume. With the continuous development of its business and to deliver on their promise of “accurate, delicate, and precise” customer service, China Eastern Airlines needed to expand their customer service capability. In April 2014, they saw a surge in customer call center demand that required a quick response. They decided to complete a new call center operations center in Xi’an to deliver 300 seats to accommodate the increased demand. The deadline to finish the IT systems for this new project was just 2 months away.
After carefully considering different options, a traditional PC infrastructure was ruled out because it was too time-consuming and expensive to deploy. So they looked to alternatives and determined that only a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution could satisfy all their requirements. After researching several vendors, they found that only Owtware could provide a complete solution on their required schedule. In only 2 weeks, China Eastern Airlines completed a comprehensive proof-of-concept (POC) implementation using Owtware’s iCONN Server technology. The results exceeded expectations for both time and quality of service. After choosing Owtware’s solution, the final deployment took only 3 days, and was completed 2 weeks before the project deadline.
Challenges
Fast. The deployment time was a major concern because of the tight project deadline. The system need to be up and running in just 2 months. Also, the IT staff needed to be able to manage the system independently from the start of the project. So the final solution must be easy to deploy, and easy to learn to operate in order to satisfy the project schedule.
Simple. The Xi’an call center is sub-division of China Eastern Airline’s call center operations. The Xi’an office had no existing IT staff on-site. Most of their system administration experts were located in their Shanghai headquarters. The solution had to be easy to install, reliable to operate, and had to support remote administration by their Shanghai IT staff.
Reliable. The call center operations are run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The solution must support uninterrupted operations to ensure business continuity. With previous PC-based solutions, on-site system troubleshooting and maintenance often interrupted operations. Also the systems were time-consuming to restore in case of system failure because of the complex software packages used by the call center staff. The new solution had to solve these problems.
Secure. The call center staff routinely access personal customer information. It is imperative that this information is kept secure. The solution must provide ways to guarantee data security to prevent accidental data loss or intentional theft.
Owtware Solution
Plug-and-Play. Owtware’s iCONN Server can be installed and running in just 5 minutes. Because of the unique software-defined all-in-one design, there are no additional external dependencies to install and configure. All system functions can be up and operational simply by powering on the system.
Intuitive. The Owtware iCONN Server’s user and management interface is patterned after simple web applications. There are no extra client packages to install and configure. This means that the user interface is simple and intuitive, helping the user to be quickly master common functions and operations.
Reliable. The Owtware iCONN Server is designed to be operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All internal systems are designed to self diagnose and self correct in case of intermittent network or system interruptions. An innovative network management and routing system ensures uninterrupted connectivity to each user’s VM. A proactive alerts system ensures administrators receive ample warning to correct issues before they affect system stability.
Highly Available. The control software for the Owtware iCONN Server automatically discovers and joins additional server nodes to participate in a cluster. The cluster is automatically configured to keep multiple copies of the system data. An active heartbeat and failover algorithm is used to automatically detect failures and shift functions to available nodes within seconds. This guarantees an always-available system even in the most demanding environments.
Compact. The Owtware iCONN Server system is designed to work on standard rack-mount servers. Software-defined cluster-aware systems pool the resources of groups of machines to deliver a large-capacity, high-performance solution. There are no specialized hardware components or bulky systems required. The final solution for 300 users used six 1U servers, fitting easily into less than ¼ of a single cabinet.
Quick Templates. Owtware iCONN Server’s template management system enables administrators to easily create a template from any exiting virtual machine. This enables them to rapidly create and deploy new standardized desktop systems. Complex applications need only be installed and configured once, and then deployed en-masse to each user.
Security. Owtware iCONN Server comes with a comprehensive security and policy management system to enable IT administrators to define fine-grained policies to control access to the system. Virtual desktop machines can be completely isolated from end-user networks ensuring complete data security. Comprehensive device access control policies further ensure data security while enabling end-users to still use necessary devices such as A/V equipment.
Compatibility. Owtware iCONN Server delivers a highly compatible operating environment for guest operating systems and devices. That means that all end-user devices just worked out-of-the-box, and applications were installed and configured without any compatibility issues.
Customizable. The client user interface of the Owtware iCONN Server system can be easily customized to match each customer’s unique needs. This allows the customer to deliver a branded user experience that integrates seamlessly with their existing IT investments.
Reporting. Built-in reporting functions of the iCONN Server System enables call center supervisors to track online daily usage of the call center employees.
Performance. The iCONN Server System efficiently delivers the performance and power of the host server systems to each virtual desktop machine. This yields a responsive user experience similar to the original PC user experience, allowing users to experience a smooth transition to cloud computing.
Customer Benefits
Time Savings. China Eastern Airlines was able to reduce the typical project time from 6 to 12 months for similar systems, down to less than 2 months by using Owtware iCONN Server.
Power Savings. Customer estimated an 80% reduction in power consumption compared to a traditional PC deployment by using the new server-based infrastructure and low-power thin clients.
Personnel Savings. China Easter Airlines was able to install and operate the new remote site without hiring any local IT staff to operate the system on-site by using Owtware iCONN Server’s simple management interface and powerful remote administration capabilities.
Summary
China Eastern Airlines was able to deploy a complete IT solution for a new call center in Xi’an in less than two months using Owtware iCONN Server. The final solution exceeded expectations, delivering more features and more capabilities than required. Data is secure by design, and end-users experienced a smooth transition to cloud computing by delivering good user experience and application compatibility. This use case demonstrates how innovative cloud technologies from Owtware can empower businesses to keep pace with rapidly expanding business needs.