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IT in coal mining? Yes
BLA Industries helps its remote users to access business data and applications by consolidating applications
By Ashwani Mishra
Coal mining is a dangerous activity. Slope failure, underground mining roof collapse and gas explosions are common occurrences. Protecting the life of workers is a challenge, and coal mining companies are always seeking to meet such challenges. But for BLA Industries Pvt Ltd, which mines 2,40,000 metric tons of coal and produces 3,30,000 metric tons of coke annually, the challenge was of a different kind. IT.
BLA’s mines are located in remotes sites in Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand. The challenge was to deliver applications to remote users in a faster, more reliable and secure manner, and also cater to an increase in the number of users in future without additional costs. Internet connectivity at these sites was available only through dial-up, and proved to be unreliable. “We needed to deliver critical business data and applications to remote users at these remote sites. Uptime for leased lines was only 70-75 percent, and very unreliable. The time to respond to complaints was also becoming untenable,” recollects Atul Bansal, the company’s DGM for IT.
 BLA then decided to try other options. The use of VSAT links helped solve the remote connectivity issue. However, the issue of delivering the applications to remote users was still there. At this juncture, Navision (an ERP application from Microsoft) was implemented.
Initially, the management opted for a separate server for each site. “But this increased the cost of ownership because along with many Navision server software and user licenses, additional OS and database server licenses were required,” says Bansal. Also, there were problems in terms of missing transactions and interruption of SQL replication.
And the challenges didn’t seem to end. The company had four weigh bridges at its two production locations. It used a Weigh Soft application at these locations to track dispatches at the weigh bridges and issue delivery receipts, and make triplicate entries of all the trucks and dumpers passing through. The recording of transactions was a cumbersome process; the transaction had to be entered first in the Weigh Bridge software, then in Excel, and finally in Navision. “The process was proving to be unreliable and insecure, and streamlining this key business process became imperative,” recalls Bansal.
BLA therefore appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to do an implementation audit of Navision. As per PwC’s recommendation, BLA had to centralize all the servers and additional back-up connectivity. Centralized server management was the key to shift toward an integrated IT approach for BLA’s production locations.
Overcoming the barrier
To have a centralized application management, BLA chose to implement Citrix Presentation Server and Citrix Access Gateway. Earlier, the company was using Microsoft Terminal Services. After carrying out a comparison between the two solutions, it found that the Citrix solution was more efficient in terms of administration, and that the response time was half of what the company achieved with Terminal Services. This implied savings on the available bandwidth, and exposing a greater number of users to the system. Secure connectivity was another area where the solution fared better as it did not expose the desktop and servers. The addressing time was also less. A single session could address 4-5 users.
The Access Gateway allowed users to securely access applications running on Presentation Server over the Web. It offered standards-based SSL encryption and extensive authentication support of both Active Directory and RSA token. The company also implemented the endpoint scanning capability of the Access Gateway Advanced to scan the user’s desktop or laptop for the OS version, for antivirus software installation, and to find out whether the latest patches/updates had been applied or not. Users are now granted access to the network only if their devices meet the policies set by the IT department.
“Due to the centralized management capabilities of the Presentation Server, new applications and upgrades can be quickly delivered to the users at remote locations. Accessing of applications as per user roles and access rights has resulted in greater security,” explains Bansal.
The company also deployed a Weigh Soft application on the Presentation Server. This made it easy to monitor the dispatches of truckloads at the production sites.
The solution ensured a single, secure and reliable entry of all dispatches compared to the triplicate entries done previously. “Now Weigh Bridge entries are directly integrated with Navision, and users do not have to re-enter the same transaction. It saves us time and reduces errors so the data is much more reliable now,” says Bansal.
The company has saved anywhere between 40-60 percent by using the above solution; the savings are with respect to the tangible and intangible costs involved in maintaining the earlier solution.
The Citrix solution has also touched other areas like training of personnel. Earlier, training in managing certain business processes involved numerous sessions, repetitive tasks, sending help files, discussions over the phone and occasionally travel to remote locations. Now with the advanced session shadowing feature of the Presentation Server, BLA development personnel and the IT team can remotely take control of user sessions and train users in various functionalities.
Auxiliary operations
During our interaction with Bansal, the company was in the process of migrating to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. The reason for the migration was the IP telephony plans of the company. Exchange Server 2007 has components and features for unified communications. “Also, the mobility feature of Exchange 2007 is good. On a simple mobile without any features and using voice commands, a remote user can access mail,” says Bansal.
BLA has also revamped its architecture by using VMware standard server. On a single server there are six virtual machines which host applications that include active directory, exchange server, database server, Citrix presentation server, access gateway and content management. The migration of all the hardware, software and licenses cost the company around Rs 50 lakh.
The virtual machines are connected through IPSec, 2GB switch to the HP 1200 all-in-one storage. For backup it uses Dell RTM 3 that is connected to the HP 1200.
The company does not have a disaster recovery (DR) site. “We are not keeping a DR site as of now because the HP storage has in-built snapshots that can be configured for regular intervals, and then a Veritas solution is used to back up data on offline tapes. These tapes will be outside the premises,” explains Bansal.
BLA is also planning to adopt Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and has already initiated talks with a couple of vendors. “SOA will give us more flexibility and functionality in our ERP,” says Bansal. In addition, it is also looking at business intelligence tools provided they fit its budget.
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