Responding Quickly and Flexibly to UTC Fuel Cells’ Growing Needs
Client: UTC Fuel Cells
Challenge: Outsource IT support and services to support rapid growth and joint-venture initiatives.
Solution: Engage CSC to implement a new data center that consolidated and streamlined equipment.
Results: Cost savings, improved efficiencies and collaboration, a standard IT infrastructure, consolidation and streamlining of IT equipment; server maintenance costs reduced by 33 percent.
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A division of United Technologies Corporation (UTC), UTC Fuel Cells is the world leader in fuel cell production and development for commercial, transportation, residential and space applications. As part of CSC’s global outsourcing partnership with UTC, CSC has been collaborating closely with UTC Fuel Cells to support the company’s rapid growth and joint-venture initiatives.
Supporting the Shell-UTC Fuel Cells Joint Venture
In May 2001, UTC Fuel Cells announced the formation of HydrogenSource LLC (a joint venture with Shell Hydrogen US) to develop, manufacture and sell fuel processors and hydrogen generation systems for the emerging fuel cell and hydrogen fuel applications.
To support this effort, CSC responded immediately to establish a new office, with cutting-edge IT systems that could facilitate extensive electronic communication with collaborators around the globe.
Data Center Consolidation Reduces Server Costs by 33%
The story of IT at UTC Fuel Cells was similar to that in the other UTC business units: Over the years, IT tools and systems evolved without any central strategy. Individual departments created IT systems to meet individual needs. That’s how there came to be two data centers within the same UTC Fuel Cells building in South Windsor, CT.
Perceiving an obvious business benefit to consolidating both data centers into one new and improved data center, CSC helped UTC Fuel Cells design a new center that consolidated and streamlined equipment to drive significant improvement and cost savings.
Supporting New Hires
When UTC Fuel Cells hired more than 100 engineers in a matter of months, they all needed powerful workstations to support research and development efforts. CSC played a key support role in this effort, helping UTC Fuel Cells assemble more than 100 high-performance Dell machines that support the UTC corporate standard.
The Benefits to UTC Fuel Cells
- Central IT strategy and new, state-of-the-art data center, resulting in better efficiencies, a standard IT infrastructure and associated cost savings
- Consolidation and streamlining of IT equipment
- Server maintenance costs cut by 33 percent as a result of the consolidation of two data centers into a single, improved center
- Better project collaboration among UTC Fuel Cells experts around the world, thanks to CSC’s sophisticated IT systems
- Access to CSC’s global outsourcing expertise, best practices and business process reengineering expertise
- Access to a broad range of CSC consulting expertise, as we partner with UTC Fuel Cells to build the IT foundation that will support the company’s current plans and future growth
Moving forward, CSC will provide more strategic support, as needed, to help UTC Fuel Cells prepare for future growth. We will also continue to provide a broad range of support services, from the implementation of best IT practices to continually improve the IT infrastructure to sophisticated business process reengineering expertise that will help the company build an IT foundation that can support future growth.