Background:

Vale is the global leader in iron ore and pellet production and the second largest nickel producer in the world and the largest in the Americas by market capitalization. With corporate headquarters in Brazil, Vale is present in 38 countries and directly employs more than 119,000 people across the world, with a further base of 54,000 people on projects. Vale is a pioneering mining company that works with passion to discover and transform natural resources into prosperity and sustainable development. Vale believes that innovation is an essential ingredient forming the foundation for development that will assist with achieving the vision of being the largest and best mining company in the world.

Challenge:

Citrix has been a long adopted technology approach within Vale, and its use as a means to deliver business critical applications has been heightened through business specific activities, such as acquisitions of Inco in 2006 and the Moatize project in Mozambique. Leveraging Citrix technologies to assist in this regard has been strategic to advancing business processes at an accelerated pace. Vale’s accelerated growth, business activities and requirements had given way to a Citrix infrastructure that was just as dispersed as the business itself, geographically speaking. The existing Citrix delivery infrastructures were heavily focused on regional strategy and deployment, lacking a global focus, adoptive strategy or a single, common vision and approach. As Vale moved more towards a global technical and operational framework, the need to understand how Citrix technologies fit into this model became increasingly important.

Approach:

Third Octet follows a proven six step methodology approach to determine the best solution for implementation and end user managed services, if required, for our clients.

Solution:

As the strategy and architecture subject matter experts, Third Octet was leveraged for expertise in defining, understanding and, subsequently, designing a Citrix-focused IT Strategy for global implementation of Citrix, serving to satisfy Vale’s Enterprise Architecture to develop an internal strategy of leveraging Citrix technologies to assist with a globalized application delivery approach, and provide the necessary architecture requirements to assist with determining when, where, how, and why a Citrix application delivery approach would make the most business and technical sense. Third Octet designed a global pod-based framework for Citrix deployment within three regional data center locations – Canada, Brazil, and Singapore – serving localized and travelling users across North America, South America, and Asia Pacific, respectively. The framework, built using a layered approach in each region, was designed to accommodate a longevity strategy due to the sheer volume of infrastructure and services that needed to be integrated and migrated from decentralized, legacy systems. The infrastructure allowed Vale IT teams, and partners, a building block approach to gradual global transition.

Results

Vale was able to implement an internal global IT strategy that supports advancing business processes, business decisions and accelerated growth across all regions and move away from a regionalized Citrix infrastructure to a centralized, highly-scalable, and agile infrastructure condensed over fewer delivery centers without significant impact to IT.

I can’t state enough the value of the relationship between Third Octet and Vale. We’ve been working with the people on the Third Octet team for the last 6 years on multiple initiatives – Cisco UCS, VMware, Citrix, and Managed Services. It’s for many reasons why we have a successful relationship and is why we trust Third Octet as one of our leading value added reseller partners.

– Peter Celec, Team Lead, North Atlantic for Vale Canada Limited, speaking to overall engagements.

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For as long as I have known and worked with Third Octet, they have consistently demonstrated an ability to adapt to the needs of their customers rapidly and considerately. They can do this because they maintain required qualifications and competency with technologies that are in demand. Combined with a very pleasant professional demeanor, the team is a significant project asset and an exceptional technical resource.

– Michael Otto, Senior Security Specialist, Vale Canada Limited