OREANDA-NEWS. On December 10, 2008 The Iron Ore Division (IOD) of Metinvest Group has completed the project focused on unification of applied software and optimization of IT-infrastructure. The project helped reduce the aggregate cost of IT-infrastructure ownership by 29% or UAH 25m annually, reported the press-centre of SCM. 

The project allows to manage and monitor the IT-infrastructure of the division enterprises from a single place, optimize cost of maintenance and management of IT-resources (a team of 12 specialists can manage over 4,600 computers) and put the environment in place for further effective build-up and integration of business applications. The project also provides for adoption of innovative IT-services: jobs central management system, monitoring and control of business goals servers and ensuring IT-security.
 
The project is exceptional as it was realized on basis of standard Microsoft software: Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2, Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007, Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 R2, Microsoft ISA Server 2006, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft Windows ХР и Microsoft Office System 2007. The high integration capacity helped to use almost 100% of all functions of the software.
 
"Metinvest's iron ore division is developing successfully owing to investment in production cycles and world-class innovations. Timely and reliable information about all processes at an enterprise is a fundamental factor for making effective management decisions. We save over UAH 25m every year only by improving effectiveness of management", said Aleksandr Vilkul, Honorary President of Northern and Central Ore Mining and Processing Plants, at a press conference.
 
Cooperation with Microsoft Consulting helped create a professional team, which can apply the experience gained at the IOD to realize similar projects at other assets of Metinvest.

Project Stages and Details: The task group comprising specialists of Metinvest Group's IOD and Microsoft Consulting developed an IT-infrastructure optimization project based on the model "Single Data Processing Centre - Units" and deployed the main and backup Data Processing Centres (DPC). The DPC had an unmatched objective to ensure 11 key services of IT-infrastructure that can fulfil almost all the IT tasks: services of Catalogue, firewalls, files and print, backup and recovery, certificates, mail services, infrastructure deployment and management, network services, as well as maintenance of computing and data storage devices. Microsoft specialists also developed and introduced a standard IT-infrastructure for a remote enterprise, which enables to set up and integrate new units into the common IT-infrastructure just over one week.

As a result, the customer's IT-team independently connected seven enterprises of the division (over 3,000 work places) to the system by reading the project documents. The IT-infrastructure design was tailored to further expansion of the enterprises in the division and their IT-structures. Therefore, the system will be further developed by the IOD specialists.

Microsoft specialists provide Microsoft Premier Support and develop operations management solutions of central IT-infrastructure based on Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF).

Metinvest Group is the regional leader in mining and metals sector and one of the key players at world’s iron and steel market. Metinvest Group companies produce 10.5 million tonnes of steel and more than 40 million tonnes of iron ore raw materials annually. Metinvest not only satisfies its own raw material needs but is also a key supplier for many other Ukrainian and European companies, as well as Asian businesses.

Metinvest Holding is the managing company of Metinvest Group. The owners of the METINVEST HOLDING are Metinvest B.V. (Netherlands) with 51.15% and ZAO SCM with (48.85%).