IT Extraordinaire Mac Abella propels savings for his employer through strategic outsourcing initiatives
"We are projecting at least 38% savings on Total Cost of Ownership over 5 years by outsourcing the implementation and management of our Active Directory services to NTT DATA Philippines instead of hiring a certified Microsoft professional."
Ferdinand “Mac” Abella started his incredible journey to the top during his time at Hewlett-Packard Asia Pacific where he served as Technical Support Engineer III and then later on as Level 2 Technical Support Officer at Robert Bosch Communications Center.
In 2011, Mac decided to explore an opportunity with a leading geothermal energy company as a Systems Engineer which was later on transformed to an IT Communications and Network Technology Owner. His role is a combination of technical and management duties. The technical area encompasses designing, managing, monitoring, maintaining systems and network infrastructure, network routing and switching, firewall and web filter management among others. The management responsibilities on the other hand, includes communications technology management, leading and managing networking projects, training and developing outsourced partners, and participation in industry groups.
Another key transformation that Mac has to take into account as part of his role is to align all of his projects with his Company’s direction towards strategic outsourcing. Such directions aim to spin-off non-core activities to third parties that can better manage certain projects with more focus and efficiency and to concentrate the company’s internal resources and balance it out with core activities through initiatives.
Given that the organization where Mac belongs to is not an IT Company, there were previously less focus and governance on technology which resulted to a lot of issues specifically with the architecture of information and technology services. With the recent organizational changes and under new leadership however, there is now a conscious effort from the IT department to reinvent themselves from being a cost center to becoming a profit center imposing governance on all IT services and ensuing that all of these services are at par with the industry standards.
One of the initiatives for improvement which was lead by Mac was the Domain Consolidation project. “Our user directory was mismanaged and unorganized. We had 7 existing domains even though we all belong to just one organization. We knew we had to consolidate these domains from 7 to 1 but we lack the internal personnel who will execute the project” said Mac Abella. “This project is very important to us because it will be the single source of truth for our Identity Management and Single Sign On Initiatives”.
Instead of requesting to hire for additional personnel who will execute the project, Mac engaged NTT DATA Philippines, a leading Information Technology solutions provider, as the outsourced partner for the implementation of Domain Consolidation project. The scope includes consolidating all existing domains into one, users and computers accounts migration, upgrade Active Directory platform from 2003 to 2008, Domain Name System architecture, and improved system security among others.
※“We have three main criteria on our partner selection process. These are 1) Expertise in AD implementation, 2) Market leadership in its industry, and 3) Ability to sustain its services upon project completion through long term Managed Services engagement. NTT DATA Philippines had them all,” said Mac. “Being a decade long Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and the leading Microsoft Solutions implementer in the country made out our mind to go NTT DATA Philippines. What made it sweeter is that their business approach of working hand in hand with their customers aligns with our organization’s direction of transforming from a vendor-client relationship into a “one team” strategic partnership.”
The domain consolidation project that NTT DATA Philippines has implemented through Mac’s initiative has allowed his employer to reap savings and improve their user and computer accounts management. “We are projecting at least 38% savings on Total Cost of Ownership over 5 years by outsourcing the implementation and management of our Active Directory services to NTT DATA Philippines instead of hiring a certified Microsoft professional.”
※“Engaging NTT DATA Philippines empowered me to realize a whole new perspective. An effective role of an IT professional in a non-IT company is to enable the business rather than to be technically focused. I am sharing my story to give other IT professionals a different perspective that might be helpful in their roles and future decisions.”