Snohomish County Public Utility District

Making systems management easier

Snohomish County Public Utility District (PUD) No. 1 provides electric and water service in northwest Washington state. The District heavily relies on systems management software to help its three-person help desk to serve more than 1,000 employees at seven sites. When the District decided to upgrade its systems management software, it sought an IT consulting firm that could provide the right expertise and a cost-effective solution.

Snohomish County PUD chose Resolute to upgrade the District from Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 1.2 to SMS 2.0, and train the District's IT staff on the technology. Resolute completed the project ahead of schedule and 20 percent under budget.

The Challenge

Snohomish County PUD used the remote control capabilities of SMS 1.2 to distribute software and view problems at users' desktops. The District needed to distribute critical software packages and wanted to upgrade to SMS 2.0 to gain stability and other features. Complicating the picture was the departure of Snohomish County PUD's SMS administrator, which left the District with no employees trained to administer SMS.

Power outages leave no time for major technology changes, so the client requested a rapid deployment before the start of the busy storm season. The District also wanted to complete the upgrade with no system downtime and no disruption in its help desk service.

The Results

Snohomish County PUD chose Resolute for the project because of the experienced staff’s ability to deliver a cost-effective solution.

The District needed to deploy two critical software packages as soon as possible, so Resolute configured, tested, and deployed the packages using SMS 1.2. Resolute then configured and deployed SMS 2.0 and Windows 2000 Server. To keep SMS available to the help desk, Resolute deployed the new system in phases while keeping SMS 1.2 operational to handle any systems management tasks that came up before the upgrade was complete.

At project end, Resolute trained Snohomish County PUD staff on the new technology, showing the help desk how to use SMS 2.0. Resolute also showed network administrators how to manage SMS 2.0 and how to use SMS 2.0 to create and distribute software packages. Two weeks after the project was completed, Resolute followed up with the District to make sure everything was running well.

Using their expertise in both technology and project management, Resolute finished the project ahead of schedule and 20 percent under budget.