Success Story: Bechtel Corporation

Transforming More Than 100 Years of Excellence

“HP became a partner in our transformation process, because they were

interested in helping us find long-term solutions to our IT challenges—even if
the solution did not involve HP products.”
--Geir Ramleth, Senior Vice President and CIO, Bechtel Corporation

HP customer case
Objective:
study: HP helps
Develop a worldwide Project Services
Bechtel implement Network—an environment for Bechtel’s “collective
savings in its IT intelligence.” To allow workers to easily connect
infrastructure to authorized projects through a secure portal,
using the Internet, browser-based technology, and
Industry: Engineering, platform-based applications.
construction, and
project management Approach:
HP helped solve some of Bechtel’s largest
challenges by using a big-picture view. HP’s
willingness to facilitate solutions that didn’t
necessarily involve HP helped provide Bechtel a
viable solution for the Project Services Network as
well as additional IT projects.

IT improvements:
• Installed HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosures
based on dual- and quad-core computational
server blades
• Implemented virtualization techniques developed
by Bechtel, HP, and third-party vendors
• Implemented tiered storage model
Business outcomes:
• Reduced maintenance costs
• Increased utilization of computing resources
from 2% to over 75%
• Reduced time to commission new servers from
five days to five hours to less than 15 minutes
When the global leader in engineering and
construction decided to transform its business
processes, it knew it needed some help along the
way. It also knew it needed an experienced partner
who could help solve problems–not just sell them
products. It found that partner in HP.
Bechtel Corporation (Bechtel) is one of the world’s
premier engineering, construction, and project
management companies. Since its founding in
1898, Bechtel has worked on more than 22,000
projects in 140 countries. Today, approximately
42,500 employees team with customers, partners,
and suppliers on hundreds of projects in nearly 50
countries.
Bechtel has made a name for itself by participating
in some of the biggest construction projects in history.
Some of these signature projects include the Hoover
Dam, the Hong Kong International Airport, UK’s first
High Speed rail line, and the Channel Tunnel, which
connects England and France beneath the English
Channel.

All ships rise with the tide

Bechtel chose HP as a partner for its business and
technology transformation, because HP demonstrated
not only technical expertise but also a willingness
to help solve some of Bechtel’s challenges. “HP’s
core culture is similar to Bechtel’s in terms of
strong, ethical values and a razor-sharp focus on
technology,” said Geir Ramleth, Senior Vice President
and Chief Information Officer at Bechtel. “We were
also impressed with HP’s big-picture view of our
challenges, and their willingness to facilitate solutions
that didn’t necessarily involve HP.” allow them to easily access the information they need
to accomplish the job at hand, without compromising
Ramleth continued, “HP demonstrates an interest in
security.”
helping us find long-term solutions to our IT challenges.
And this relationship is benefiting both of our Solution: a new way of doing business
companies, because all ships rise with the tide.” According to Ramleth, Bechtel began to consider
new paradigms to solve challenges in its business.
Challenge: geography and people
“There is a growing gap between consumer and
With 110 years of experience, Bechtel is accustomed
corporate adoption of emerging technologies and
to continually adapting in order to achieve success in
their relative effectiveness. Our challenge is how to
a constantly changing world. Recently, the company
learn from consumer-developed services/technologies
noticed its business model was evolving—becoming
and incorporate breakthroughs into our corporate/
more complex and distributed.
enterprise environments.”
The company’s size, its global reach, and the
Bechtel calls its new business and IT transformation
nature of its work were causing some operational
“Project Services Network” (PSN). “PSN allows us
IT challenges. Projects are located all over the
to capitalize on rapid global innovation, using the
world, and globally distributed teams work together
technology advances gained by others to improve our
around the clock on these projects. Bechtel not only
business model,” Ramleth explained.
hires permanent employees, but also employees of
customers, contractors, suppliers, partners, and even
“We studied Internet successes such as YouTube,
competitors.
Google, Amazon, and ‘Software-as-a-service’
These challenges highlight several important issues, successes such as Salesforce.com and came up with
including providing sufficient security, operational a new model for our global computing environment.
efficiencies, and usability of the IT infrastructure. Of PSN improves our IT development and architecture,
these concerns, security was the most pressing. With our maintenance and operations, and our end-user
so many non-Bechtel project participants, Bechtel experience.”
needed a better way to control access to information, Geir Ramleth, Senior Vice President and Chief Information
particularly to ensure the security of intellectual Officer at Bechtel
property.
PSN is the environment for Bechtel’s “collective
“In the past, we let workers come in and access our intelligence.” Using the Internet, browser-based
internal network. Our employees work side-by-side technology, and platform-based applications, workers
with customer employees, contractors, consultants, can easily connect to authorized projects through a
and even competitors,” explained Ramleth. “It was not secure, intuitive portal. The result is safe and simple
uncommon for two-thirds of project personnel to be access to disparate information, rapid and leveraged
non-Bechtel employees—workers who were sitting on deployment and support, targeted information for
our network inside the firewall. We needed a way to consumers, and a collaborative work environment.

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“HP’s core culture is similar to Bechtel’s in
terms of strong, ethical values and a razor-
sharp focus on technology. We were also
impressed with HP’s big-picture view of our
challenges, and their willingness to facilitate
solutions that didn’t necessarily involve HP.”
Geir Ramleth, Senior Vice President and Chief
Information Officer at Bechtel
A strategic partner in finding solutions
For the past three years, HP has been a close partner
with Bechtel as it developed and began implementing
PSN. In 2006, HP fostered a trusted partnership by
hosting a CIO Forum for Bechtel.
For example, when Bechtel was exploring security
issues related to its network or virtualization of
infrastructure, HP arranged for experienced vendors in
those areas to be brought in to offer their expertise.
“HP was not trying to sell us anything. Instead, they
became a partner in our transformation process. HP
is working with us to find long-term solutions to our IT
challenges, even if the solution does not involve HP
products.”
Geir Ramleth
Standardizing on the HP BladeSystem
As part of the PSN solution, Bechtel wanted to
upgrade the computing infrastructure of its massive
data centers, which consisted of various hardware
and software components from numerous providers.
Bechtel was looking for a solution that would increase
utilization and reduce data center power, cooling, and
floor space requirements.
An analysis of server usage revealed an average
percent utilization of 2.3%—surprisingly close to the
industry average, at the time, for a large, global
enterprise. If it could improve that figure, plus meet
the floor space and power goals, Bechtel would see
substantial savings in its IT infrastructure.
Bechtel decided to leverage its PSN approach to
evaluate HP BladeSystem products, HP’s ordering
and fulfillment processes, and service and support
organizations. The project, an HPC fluid dynamics
application, involved HP BladeSystem c7000
enclosures, dual and quad-core server blades, and
HP StorageWorks MSA disk arrays. HP was able to
configure and install the system on schedule, and
utilization of the powerful system quickly soared
to over 70%, including use of new virtualization
technologies.
The innovative virtualization, power and cooling,
and system management capabilities of the HP
BladeSystem exemplifies the HP Adaptive Infrastructure
strategy—a strategy that Bechtel uses for implementing
more advanced virtualization, vastly improving
utilization of resources. The HP BladeSystem enables
Bechtel to wire computing resources once and then
change them on the fly, dynamically adjusting power
and cooling to reduce energy consumption.
As Ramleth puts it, “The cost of maintenance is the
number of hours times the hourly rate, and the hourly
rate is not coming down. The bottom line is that we
are now leveraging hardware resources to an order of
magnitude of what it was before.”
Installation of the HP BladeSystem reduced the
footprint of a datacenter from 30-35,000 square feet
down to 35 racks—nearly a 35:1 reduction in floor
space requirements—and at the same time increased
application performance. Using virtualization
techniques developed by Bechtel, HP, and third-party
vendors, utilization of computing resources increased
from the previous 2 % to over 75%. Virtualization
also greatly improved commissioning time for new
servers—initially from five days to five hours, and with
the application of enhanced provisioning tools, more
recently reduced to less than 15 minutes.
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 A part of Bechtel’s overall success with virtualization
are the alliances HP has with other key technology
vendors, including Citrix and Microsoft. These
alliances are part of an evolving ecosystem, that
when leveraged, provide end-to-end virtualization
capabilities, allowing Bechtel to maximize the
combined knowledge and turn that knowledge into
tangible solutions.
Solving the storage challenge
Bechtel also sought HP’s expertise in the area of
storage. Soon after deploying HP blades, Bechtel
began to experience severe storage outages. HP’s
mission-critical support team began analyzing all
of the individual products and how they all worked
together, looking for any clues to determine the cause
of the outages. After three weeks, HP determined the
problem was caused by a parameter change in the
storage system that was requested by the storage
vendor. HP’s expertise in understanding the entire
infrastructure and its willingness to get involved with
problems unrelated to HP products helped Bechtel.
Shortly after this incident, Bechtel replaced its existing
mission-critical storage systems with HP storage
solutions.
HP—contributing to the overall solution
Bechtel has now standardized on HP BladeSystems,
storage solutions, and standard desktop technology.
Bechtel is also looking to standardize on other HP
technologies. For example, to complement their initial
move into the emerging Desktop Virtualization space,
Bechtel is exploring HP Thin Client technology.
“As part of our PSN solution, we have simplified our
technology vendors, choosing to work with partners
like HP who understand the entire IT environment and
can help us solve our challenges enterprise-wide. By
standardizing one vendor, we save money, increase
simplicity, and improve control.”
Geir Ramleth
Ramleth concluded, “We are extremely pleased with
the expertise HP has provided us during the first few
stages of our transformation process. We plan to
maintain this partnership as we strive to achieve our
PSN goals.”

The flexibility of HP storage solutions has also

provided Bechtel with an opportunity to move toward
a more cost-effective tiered storage model. Inside the
enterprise data centers, which serve Bechtel projects
worldwide, data can now be effectively classified
and stored as “live” or “archive,” providing an option
for the data owners to choose between the two at a
lower cost per gigabyte unit rate for the “archive” data
stores.

Technology for better business outcomes

To learn more, visit www.hp.com/go/hpc
www.partner.bechtel.com
© 2008 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change
without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty
statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an
additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.
4AA0-xxxxENW, July 2008