HONG KONG, 2 MARCH 2009 – Hong Kong Broadband Network and last week announced the successful implementation of IBM system storage, virtualisation and data centre solutions.
Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of City Telecom (HK), a Hong Kong-based provider of integrated telecommunications services. HKBN specialised in the provision of residential broadband in Hong Kong, and plans to extend its homepass service to two million households and 1,800 commercial buildings. HKBN currently serves more than 800,000 subscribers across voice, broadband (symmetric 25Mbps up to 1Gbps) and Internet Protocol-television services.
The solutions implemented were in line with HKBN’s aim to build a more dynamic infrastructure to support its business growth. It allows the company to drive new and improved services by responding faster and effectively to the increasingly changing market demands and new challenges in the current economic environment.
Enhanced billing services
With an advanced and dynamic IT environment, HKBN can continuously improve its customer service through the enhanced billing and subscriber e-mail services. The new data centre also helps the company to capture business opportunities and reduce its operational costs.
John Chong, director of corporate division of HKBN, said, “Hong Kong’s telecommunications market is one of the most liberalised in the world. To compete and be successful, we have to meet the challenges of a dynamic market and constantly look for better and more innovative ways to meet customer expectations.”
“IBM helped us to run our business smarter and improve services to customers by providing a more dynamic infrastructure for our billing systems and subscriber e-mail system. At the same time, we have been able to reduce the total cost of ownership and do more with less through storage virtualisation,” Chong said.
As a result of the implementation, IBM has delivered a 50 per cent improvement in application performance for HKBN’s billing system and a 70 per cent increase in subscriber number for the bbMAIL system.
Ivan Tam, chief technology officer of HKBN, said “The building of the new data centre has allowed HKBN to provide data centre solutions to clients and capture business opportunities in this market.”
Three new projects
HKBN has implemented three major projects that delivered a more dynamic, resilient, virtualised and efficient infrastructure with the support of IBM.
1) Consolidation and virtualisation lowers TCO and improves manageability – By deploying IBM’s System Storage DS8000 and virtualisation technologies supported by SAN Volume Controller (SVC), HKBN has simplified its storage infrastructure, reducing the number of physical storage and server boxes through consolidation which in turn has improved its total cost of ownership.
Performance improvements of 50 per cent were delivered in some long-running processes without modifying the application codes, far exceeding the 30 per cent increase in application performance estimated by IBM. The deployment of SVC has brought significant business benefits for HKBN for investment protection and flexibility.
With SVC onboard, HKBN can continue to utilise its current storage systems while improving the overall manageability of it as a single storage pool.
2) Robust storage infrastructure supports improved subscription e-mail service –HKBN’s subscription e-mail service (bbMAIL) faced slow response times and service interruptions in peak hours due to storage system overload which had hindered the subscriber growth.
IBM’s System Storage N5300 was deployed to provide faster service response time for e-mail access, increase storage system performance and data capacity headroom for the growing number of users, and provide an IT infrastructure with high availability. The solution allowed HKBN to enhance its e-mail storage to 1GB for users and achieved a 70 per cent increase in subscriber number.
This allows HKBN expand its customer base and improve customer service levels.
3) Data centre solution to capture business opportunities – HKBN wanted to capture new business opportunities by providing data centre services and required a data centre solution that can support its strategy of maximising energy efficiency. IBM Global Technology Services provided a space and cooling-optimisation approach to design and build the new data centre that included a sophisticated air conditioning system, enhanced airflow cooling capabilities and raised flooring, Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS), and a fire protection and prevention system.
