blog

Case Studies Alderney Gambling Control Commission - Automated Workflow

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:06:11 +0000

The Alderney Gambling Control Commission's new automated workflow system has delivered real improvements in efficiency and productivity.

Background

The Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC) was established in May 2000. The Commission, consisting of the Chairman and three members, is independent and non-political, and regulates eGambling on behalf of the States of Alderney.

The Commission has to ensure that its regulatory and supervisory approach meets the very highest of international standards.

As well as new licence applications, regulation requires that for all existing licensees, any ‘minor’ changes (to a game; introduction of a new game; changes to processes) need approval by the Commission.

With a surge in the market place for online gaming, coupled with the ongoing promotion of Alderney as a centre of excellence for the eGaming industry, the AGCC was receiving ever increasing volumes of requests for authorisations. The number of live operations had doubled over a two year period with a proportionate increase in the number of change requests received.

Business Challenge

The manual system was just no longer able to cope with demand; turnaround times were increasing - leading to frustrations amongst potential and existing licensees. The Island’s reputation and that of its business partners (infrastructure suppliers) was potentially in danger of suffering temporary damage.

At this juncture the Comission could have chosen to employ more people to cope with demand – incurring the inevitable additional cost which would have had to be passed on to the licensees - running the danger of making the jurisdiction uncompetitive.

So the decision was taken to look for an automated solution and Itex was approached for assistance.

Solution

The need for an automated workflow solution was evident in order to facilitate submission of change control documents by email and by means of a web site.

Itex was commissioned to produce a system which would allow the AGCC to better manage changes requested by licensees

The system needed a three tier approach to accommodate the three types of requests received: new game; game change; and routine change.

Given the tight legislative framework in which the gaming industry operates, the competitive nature of the industry plus the need to protect any systems from fraudsters, security was of paramount importance.

Other specific objectives outlined in the briefing process were:

• Reduction of processing time – particularly for routine change requests;

• Intuitive user-friendly system;

• A resilient system;

• Accessibility from around the world – the AGCC has a global client base operating in different time zones.

Itex implemented a portal and workflow system on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

The system has some excellent features which tackled all requirements including the key issue of security which was one of the main concerns. Users have dual level authentication as well as being issued with a key fob device displaying a six digit code which changes every minute.

The workflow has three streams which accommodates the multiple nature of the requests and users have 24/7 access via the web-based portal.

Benefits

The benefits of the new system were numerous and procedural improvements were immediate.

The processing of low risk routine requests has improved significantly – the automated solution allows AGCC staff to consider approval with minimal delay. The time saved on these requests has enabled an improvement on the turnaround time for the other two categories of request;
These clear improvements in processing time results in concrete benefits for licensees in implementing commercially critical solutions quickly
the comprehensive document management system enables clients to upload documents and financial reports at any time;
there is real-time visibility of progress both for AGCC and licensees;
all documents relating to individual change requests can be viewed;
a full audit trail is maintained

Case study Ardel Holdings - Virtualisation

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:04:38 +0000

Rick Brooks of Ardel Holdings Limited shares the company's experience of server virtualisation.

The Story

Business Challenge

Ardel Holdings had increasing pressure on space; we also had fairly complex and time consuming back up and disaster recovery processes in place and due to the nature of the fiduciary business in which the company operates, compliance requirements are stringent.

With 48 servers in total including the DR site, we were keen to explore alternatives.

We had researched the potential benefits of server virtualisation but initially, as we were happy to admit, we were relatively skeptical about some of the seemingly extreme claims being made:

“Reduce your server estate by 90% i.e. 100 physical servers down to 10!!”

However we were sufficiently convinced by potential benefits to investigate the option further and came to Itex for some initial advice.

Solution

Phase one

Itex was appointed in a consultancy capacity to work with Ardel to design the virtual server infrastructure. We have our own in-house IT team and Itex worked alongside us at the initial stages of the project to advise on the appropriate tactical approach for the virtualisation process.

We tackled the DR environment first. Itex assisted with the initial infrastructure build and once the virtual environment was ready, the Ardel team was able to create servers in the new environment using VMWare converter software.

Each of the physical servers was taken off-line in turn, and transferred into the ‘virtual’ environment. Once completed, it was tested for user acceptance. After running the new DR ‘virtual’ server environment on-site for a week to test functionality, it was taken to the off-site data centre to replace all the physical servers.

There then followed a period of consolidation, when the team gained practical experience of the ‘virtual’ environment and Itex delivered training in order to develop the team’s knowledge base before embarking on the next phase.

Phase two

We decided to take a slow but steady approach to transferring our main servers to the virtual environment dealing with two servers each weekend.

Throughout this second phase, both physical and virtual servers were operating concurrently with the only impact on the business being during weekends when a server was taken off-line to be processed.

Server templates were created allowing for new server deployments in minutes rather than hours.

From a start point of 48 servers, we were down to 14. Not quite the 90% reduction but we were more than happy with 70%!

Benefits

Ardel has enjoyed a number of benefits:

reduction in electricity consumption both to run the servers, and the air conditioning to cool them;
improvement in the DR process by having more servers yet less ‘off-site’ hardware, offering the business an environment that is as close to the real one as possible;
it is easier to keep the ‘off-site’ DR servers up to date by copying the ‘live’ server (now just a file) to the DR servers on a regular basis, eliminating the need to visit the ‘off-site’ location to install updates;
there are now more servers available from day one in a DR situation, which are also kept up to date from both version upgrade as well as data point of view;
from a maintenance point of view, virtual servers can be moved between the remaining 14 physical servers creating significant time savings and overnight back up - which was becoming a real problem - is now quite straightforward.

Any other comments

Whilst we have an in house IT team and were able to undertake a large percentage of the work ourselves, Itex’s involvement both at the initial tactical planning stage and latterly delivering training, was invaluable to Ardel Holdings. It was a successful collaborative approach to a project which has delivered tangible benefits.

The stable and positive relationship that we have enjoyed with Itex over many years allowed us to integrate their consultancy seamlessly within our virtualisation project.

Rick Brooks
Chief Operating Officer
Ardel Holdings Limited