Direct Auto Finance Ltd
Direct Auto Finance Ltd is a subsidiary of Provident Financial PLC. DAF was established in 1997 and is now widely regarded as the market leader in the supply of alternative finance and motor vehicles in the UK. DAF employs 1300 staff in 30 locations and has an annual turnover of £280 million.
Serval Systems was initially introduced to DAF to solve an immediate data communications problem between head office and the data centre in Cardiff.
Following this, from its base of 250 staff and five branches in 1999 to a 30 branch nationwide operation by 2002 with 1200 staff. All of this was achieved whilst maintaining only 2 - 3 internal IT staff with support from Serval Systems support team.
The Solution
Data Backbone
Core to the business success was central access to sales and financial data so the first project was to provide the branch and data centre with a resilient secure data network maintained by Serval Systems. This ATM-based system was designed to expand and encompass the business’s ambitious growth plans.
Data Centre
A Citrix farm was established in the data centre by Serval Systems in Cardiff giving fast access to the back-end iseries and windows-based data. This would eventually consist of a 9-server Citrix farm plus backend data and domain controllers. This was based on IBM high density rack mounted dual processor servers.
Branch Locations
In existing branches, PC workgroup networks had been installed with a stand-alone server at each location. Even with limited number of installations at that time, this caused a constant support requirement. Hardware reliability, user error and local system interference were exacerbated by occasional theft. Local branch staff would often fail to understand the requirement to maintain backups of data.
Each location was supplied with 10 Wyse 1200LE thin client terminals giving the user a Microsoft Window experience with access to the required applications via the data centre. The users were now in an environment with almost no desktop failures and where they could not degrade the operation of IT equipment. Additionally, three printers were located at each branch complete with Vendor maintenance contracts.
This solution virtually removed the need for on-site branch support. The Wyse terminals, now 5 years old, should have a trouble-free life of at least 5 more years with server-driven Windows and application upgrades.
In addition to these major savings, it was possible to pre-configure, then install, a branch in one day, reducing the cost of expansion.
Head Office
Following the successful branch implementation of this thin client environment, the decision was made to roll out the benefits to head office. In an extension to the existing farm, 3 IBM blade centre chassis were populated with 15 blade servers and a Citrix environment rolled out using existing PC and Wyse 1200LE terminals.
Conclusion
DAF, in partnership with Serval Systems, made an informed decision to implement an IT strategy which was able to support the business growth without a corresponding increase in IT support staff. The benefits of the investment has undoubtedly been recouped many times over and yet there is no reason why the solution should not continue to deliver desktop services with low overhead for the foreseeable future.