Does anybody involved in the business of information technology work a 9 to 5 job anymore? Surely the days of the punch clock are long gone as workers strive to meet tight deadlines and growing demands.

And in some fields the demands are particularly intense. For instance, the development of tailor-made software solutions can, by its very nature, be a sprawling exercise. The tribulations of trial and error and the sheer range of skills needed to bring a project to fruition makes the setting of deadlines for such projects an imprecise science.

And, as organisations assign more resources to the development of bespoke software solutions, the creation of such solutions has become more time-critical. Which is where the concept of 24-hour global working comes into its own.

In the first of our technologies in action, we examine how the principles of division of labour can be applied to the development of software on a worldwide scale.

One example in particular illustrates how an Asian-based group of programmers develop software by day, pass their work to US quality controllers by night, and pick up the work the following morning. There is no hiatus in the development process and time constraints are significantly eased.

IT consultancy James Martin and Co and architects Ove Arup have bought into the 24-hour software development philosophy and are doing their best to beat the clock.

In our second set of case studies Jane Dudman examines how Avonmore Daires, British Airways and Kidde-Graviner are optimising and controlling their inventories by employing the latest supply chain management techniques. All of the companies have invested time and money in various enterprise resource planning packages in order to make the most of their assets.

But to what degree can software solve the intricate management issues inherent in keeping stock levels under control? Is a custom-made solution the only way to get a grip on the problem? Find out by reading this month?s case studies.

Finally, there is no shortage of jargon in the IT arena. Inter-networking is the latest buzzword. Clive Couldwell takes a look at how Hydro Polymers, Eurodollar and Smithkline Beecham are optimising their network operations within the office and those components available to workers offsite. If your workforce is constantly on the road then you may want to investigate how other companies have travelled towards global information on tap.

Internetworking

Increasingly, users are demanding greater flexibility from their networks: they want to be able to access information over local and wide area networks, and from remote or temporary sites, including the home or small office. In short, people are ?inter-networking?.

?Networking technology is becoming available for a wider and wider public,? says Pim Bilderbeek, IDC?s European networks director. ?It?s networking for the masses with Cisco, 3Com, Compaq and Bay geared to getting a share of the affordable networking market for small and branch offices.?

So which inter-networking technologies should you be looking at? ?LAN hubs and switches have become key components in providing the network infrastructures needed to support changing business priorities,? says John Wragg, IT analyst for Frost and Sullivan. ?Major innovations are imminent, including the widespread adoption of LAN switches and ATM technology.?

Technology is advancing at an alarming pace and new players are appearing all the time. For example, UK technology company ATML is spearheading the trend for high-bandwidth applications (like video conferencing and Java) over WANs to the desktop. It has come up with a deceptively simple method of delivering multimedia across a network using existing copper phone lines.

There?s no doubt that the focus on applications and the demand for data access and communications is placing a huge burden on corporate communications. Network managers want to ensure that the solutions they implement provide a seamless upgrade from current basic networking to more complex WAN and remote access usage. They also need guidance and technical support to implement these solutions properly.

Subject: Hydro Polymers

Activities: PVC manufacturer

Installation: Compaq Netelligent hardware, SAP R/3 software suite, Insight Manager

Uses: strengthening and updating existing network

PVC manufacturer Hydro Polymers is the UK subsidiary of Norway?s largest publicly-quoted company, Norsk Hydro. It decided to turn its back on traditional inter- networking vendors, Cabletron, Cisco and Bay Networks, because their systems were too expensive, and instead chose a Compaq networking package.

The company started using networks about five years ago. Its Novell network was faring well until a year ago when Hydro Polymers decided it needed to upgrade its kit. It disposed of its old Data General minicomputers from the early 1980s and replaced them with Compaq Netelligent hardware and a new SAP R/3 software suite to service the company?s 500 users and 300 PCs scattered across the large chemical plant.

?We set up a project to analyse our network, to strengthen it and make it more robust,? says IT manager, Chris May. ?We were considering upgrading to 100-Mbits/sec throughout at the time, but decided not to because it wasn?t necessary ? the performance was adequate.?

The R/3 business system would obviously run over the existing LAN, but would the technology be able to take the strain? If, for example, someone cut through one of the network?s fibre-optic cables, would it suddenly drop all Hydro Polymer?s users off the business system? ?With the DG?s serial terminals this wasn?t a problem because they were all individually wired,? explains May.

Although the thin Ethernet cabling within the chemical plant and the fibre-optic cabling running between the buildings had served the company well, there was a problem with the thin Ethernet. ?If one PC fails, it will take out the whole segment, and that means all the PCs sharing the network line,? says May. ?It was recommended we converted to 10Base-T which is individually wired back to a hub. There was also some redundancy in the fibre-optic cable, and if someone had cut through a wire it would have taken off complete branches. The new Compaq [Netelligent 5000] switches allow us to bridge any breaks automatically.?

Hydro Polymers already used Compaq servers and desktop PCs and was keen to have end-to-end provision from a single vendor. So the company opted to manage the entire network using Compaq?s network management tool, Insight Manager.

?The new kit [11 Netelligent 2016 stackable repeaters] was installed in all essential areas, so the plant could continue to produce and ship materials should everything else fail,? says May.

The company still has a few minicomputers in the less critical areas of the plant. May plans to phase these out this year and to replace them with Compaq hardware. ?This will be the second project,? he says. ?We?ve tackled the critical areas first. We can worry about invoicing, general production planning and so on if and when the business system goes down.?

Subject: Eurodollar

Activities: corporate car rental

Installation: 3Com Accessbuilder, BT leased lines

Uses: Providing a fast and accurate link between its operations centres and rental branches and customers

Eurodollar, the corporate car rental company, is replacing its existing 9.6Kbits/sec X.25 network with a digital one to keep pace with the rapidly increasing requirements for bandwidth. The organisation uses its IT infrastructure to give it an edge over its competitors. It acknowledges that an efficient network saves time and money, which in turn benefits customers.

Eurodollar has opted for a network built on 3Com remote access products and which uses BT leased lines. ?We already used 3Com equipment for some internal applications, so we looked at 3Com ? among others ? for the whole network,? says Simon Halliwell, Eurodollar?s communications manager.

The company?s network covers more than 110 car rental branches, with some in locations like garage forecourts. It also has more than 40 ?implant? sites where Eurodollar?s own staff work from a major customer?s site.

Eurodollar has developed a range of products under the Speedlink banner. At their most basic these can be used by a customer from a PC. At their most sophisticated, customers can use them to connect their corporate systems directly to Eurodollar?s. ?There can be up to eight people using it,? says Halliwell, ?and they require high bandwidth.?

There are a number of benefits for customers who link their own systems to Eurodollar?s network, including cost. ?It allows customers to control their car rental costs,? explains Halliwell. ?They could access our network via X.25, or dial-up or leased lines.?

This approach is used for one of the company?s largest customers, the Royal Automobile Club (RAC), for whom the company supplies all the vehicles needed by members when theirs break down. Eurodollar has installed a machine-to-machine link which reduces human error by transmitting details automatically from the RAC?s headquarters to the corporate servers at Eurodollar?s operations centre.

?More and more customers are following this route,? says Halliwell. ?We have to guarantee full-time availability, so the network has to support this. There?s no point in building up a fault-tolerant 24-hour central service if your own network doesn?t support it too.?

Eurodollar also has two operations centres linked by fibre optics. ?If one went down, the other could support the business, and service would continue almost uninterrupted,? says Halliwell. ?We estimate almost no down-time, even in the event of a fire.

The network is based on leased lines with ISDN for backup, and 3Com products are used throughout. There is an Accessbuilder 7000 access concentrator at each of the main administration and management sites in Leicester and Uxbridge, and the administration centre also has an Accessbuilder Remote Office 600 ISDN Basic Rate bridge/router on a 128Kbits/sec link. Most of the branches and implants have Accessbuilder Remote Office 500 ISDN access routers installed. The network management product, Impresario, is used to monitor and control all the network systems. This provides full 24-hour monitoring of the entire network from one PC.

Eurodollar is now using some of its existing telephones and fax machines with Accessbuilder Remote Office 500 devices, so that they make use of the spare backup ISDN line capacity rather than discrete analog lines. As ISDN calls cost the same as analog calls, the company benefits from reduced line rental charges.

The leased lines make use of BT?s Flexible Bandwidth service which offers circuits from 1.2kbits/sec up to 2Mbits/sec. The bandwidth can be charged for according to demand or on a scheduled basis ? for example, bandwidth can be ?booked? for different locations at different times. According to Halliwell, the arrangement is ideal. ?Because one size does not fit all, it allows us to control costs and also to try out new bits of kit. BT just turns up the bandwidth,? he says.

Subject: Smithkline Beecham

Activities: pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare company

Installation: Digital?s Netrider remote access system

Uses: providing employees on the move with access to the main network from anywhere in the world

Smithkline Beecham is one of the world?s leading pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare companies and has a turnover of #7bn. With a worldwide customer base, the company?s network is used by an increasingly mobile workforce.

Its consumer healthcare division, which is responsible for brands such as Lucozade, NRG and Horlicks, has UK offices in Weybridge, the Forest of Dean and Slough, and another in New Jersey, US. Its central network facilities are based at and managed from its Weybridge site, and a client-server network also incorporates the other three sites.

In an effort to become more customer-focused, the company has started to define key employees? roles more by the products on which they work than by their geographic location. As a result, these employees are frequently abroad targeting foreign markets, so they depend more than ever upon technology to keep them in touch with base.

To support its global approach, the company needed a remote access solution for its recently-installed IT network which would allow the mobile workforce to access the network from any point.

Having successfully implemented its #300,000 network using Digital hubs, routers, switches and servers, it made sense for Smithkline Beecham to use Digital again. The company opted for Netrider, a new remote access system, compatible with the Digital enterprise Virtual Intelligent Switched Networks (enVISN) network architecture.

Through Netrider, the company?s mobile workers can access Microsoft Office and Access, project management applications, laboratory information management systems and VAX and other client-server-based applications. According to Mike Payne, head of the company?s UK IT operations, this represents a dramatic simplification compared with previous systems. ?Before these applications were accessed differently, using a variety of tools,? he says. ?This lack of consistency wasn?t satisfactory and, with the new network safely installed, it was time to re-address the problem of accessing it.?

A centralised system was needed. Staff using portables wanted desktop facilities with remote access, wherever they were. Now they have a standard interface to Smithkline Beecham?s Electronic Office set-up and can access email from any site, anywhere in the world.

?Not only do employees benefit from the same information access as they would at their desks, they can also enjoy the same familiar look and feel, an important consideration when working in otherwise unfamiliar surroundings,? says Payne.

Inter-networking lessons:

1 Thoroughly research your business requirements. For example, if you have staff on the road, a remote access capability might well be an important part of your inter-networking solution.

2 Scalability is important. You should buy technology that you can add to as your network grows, so that potentially it can accommodate 100 users just as well as 10.

3 Make sure the installation contains the most appropriate security features for your applications. Vendors should be able to offer 24-hour back-up and technical support ? essential if your application is critical to the business.