SOUTH WEST WATER: Turns on the tap with a flexible and secure network

provide fully integrated Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. This provides SWW with suitable industry control systems that monitor and control assets and processes across their operational region supporting SWW’s 120+ pumping stations, treatment works and reservoirs/water The Client sources. The system is made up of several South West Water (SWW), one of the UK’s production and development servers in the leading water companies, provides reliable, data centre, with primary and secondary efficient and high quality drinking water and field based devices at their field sites. waste water services to over 1.6m people, throughout Cornwall and Devon and parts After 15 years, the SCADA systems were of Dorset and Somerset. SWW inherited a due for an upgrade and implementing the water system suffering from a century of neglect but, with 1,300 employees, they new application involved migrating to a have brought the region's drinking Linux operating system with a suitable water, sewerage systems and bathing management platform. The application waters into line with the stringent UK and vendor had ported its application to Linux European Union standards. SWW is and SWW was keen to reduce costs by regulated by Ofwat (The Water Services avoiding the more expensive UNIX Regulation Authority) who is the economic infrastructure and less resilient Windows. regulator of the water and sewerage sectors in England and Wales. They didn’t have the skills in-house to do so and needed a trusted partner to design,

transition and support The Challenge ‘’LinuxIT has worked with us to the new infrastructure. deliver our vision. It has shared As in any industry, many ideas, concepts, and solutions. continuous improvement We chose LinuxIT because of its The Solution of business-critical knowledge and understanding of systems can be key to Following an initial South West Water’s requirements, retaining competitive consultancy engagement, proven track record in providing advantage. Utility similar OSS tailored solutions to LinuxIT designed and companies like SWW rely other organisations and also their implemented a Standard on such systems to ability to help develop our IT Operating Environment provide access to infrastructure to support our accurate, high quality (SOE) and Management strategy.” field data that enables Platform (SOEMP) based Jeff keylock, Project Manager, South the right strategic on industry leading Red West Water. decisions be made at the Hat Enterprise Linux. right time. Using these Employing expertise and systems’ remote reference architectures amassed over 13 management capabilities, they can then years, LinuxIT worked to deliver a Linux enact those decisions in a timely and cost infrastructure optimised for the SCADA effective manner. application. This ‘Application Ready Infrastructure’ replaced the aging system Many water companies including South West and brought with it cost reduction and Water have contracted CSE Servelec to

operational efficiencies synonymous with Standard Operating Environment

Linux and Open Source software. and Management Platform  High quality, best practice The Benefits transition services from expert LinuxIT consultants By appointing LinuxIT, SWW has been able  Preferential commercial terms from to focus on its core activities, safe in the Red Hat knowledge that the design, transition and  On-going relationship to deliver support of this Red Hat Application Ready reduced TCO and continual systems Infrastructure has been undertaken by the improvement experts. Additionally, as a Red Hat Premier Business Partner, LinuxIT has secured for LinuxIT’s 5C’s SWW the very best pricing and commercial terms for the software from Red Hat.  Consult: establishing the business case and roadmap for value By selecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we creation and technology expect SWW to benefit from: investment. This included SWW’s business process, policy setting and  Significant reduction in TCO impact of regulation  A standardised operating  Conceive: accelerating success with environment in the datacentre and appropriate people, process and field technology. This included network  An enterprise ready management design and in-house tools and platform to enable remote infrastructure. management  Create: deliver IT projects into  Improved resilience in field-based production with controlled and devices with Red Hat Enterprise consistent deployment Linux management. Including production  Reduced operating costs services, patching, server monitoring and configuration management. By selecting LinuxIT we “South West Water approached LinuxIT  Control: expect SWW to benefit from: as independent specialists to solicit our manage and measure  Independent and advice regarding the choice of Linux the operational impact distributions. Through a consultation of solutions against credible advice in exercise involving Parsons Brinkerhoff, objectives. Linux software consultants to SWW, the options were  Cultivate: selection evaluated in relation to the client’s specific requirements. After careful continuously unlock  Reference consideration the advice was to use Red more value from architecture based Hat Enterprise Linux. Following this technology design of Red Hat engagement, LinuxIT were selected as investments. the services partner to design, transition and support the Red Hat Application Ready Infrastructure.“ Simon Mitchell, Executive Director, LinuxIT

About LinuxIT

LinuxIT is the UK’s leading Linux system management specialist. A Red Hat Virtualization Accelerator and Premier Partner, we use our expert skills and experience to assist organisations in the commercial and public sectors to harness the benefits of the Linux ecosystem. We do this by expanding their IT capabilities, reducing their IT infrastructure costs whilst increasing competitive advantage through the innovative use of IT. LinuxIT contributes by providing world class consulting, professional services and support services to assist customers in their migration, or integration of Linux in mixed IT environments. More at www.linuxit.com