DHL is the global market leader in international express shipping, overland transport and air freight, as well as ocean freight and contract logistics. DHL’s international network links more than 220 countries and territories worldwide. Around 285,000 employees are dedicated to providing fast and reliable services in 120,000 destinations on all continents. DHL is 100-percent owned by Deutsche Post World Net.

The Challenge: Right-scaling IT to Optimize Business

DHL was formed in 2002 through the integration of many entities under a single brand. The development of one brand is core to the business strategy of becoming the global leader in the management and transport of goods and information through a harmonized product portfolio, optimized network for pick-up and delivery, and a common set of business data, including one point of visibility, one messaging interface and one bill.

“DHL´s business is highly dependent on IT services, whose contribution is key to the achievement of our business strategy,” said Luc van Hoof, global director, Desktop & Collaboration at DHL Global IT Services. “Each business transaction generates many IT transactions, and you could say that the information about parcels is more important than the parcels themselves. Enabling global delivery of applications and access to this vital information improves our time to market. IT is the backbone of the business.”

He continued, “As a result of mergers and acquisitions, we really needed to consolidate and centralize IT and optimize the utilization of our infrastructure to improve IT support and business processes. With 2,600 business application servers in 350 server locations worldwide, we literally have all possible end-user devices and operating systems. We also use any kind of network connection and you will find almost any technology available on the market, including Citrix Presentation Server.” DHL decided to optimize, centralize and consolidate IT to realize a scalable, reliable and flexible environment that reduces costs.

Implementing Application Delivery to ´Bridge the World´

The Global IT Services organization initiated a project to determine an optimal architectural model for worldwide application delivery to improve IT support and business efficiency. DHL asked Login Consultants, a Citrix® Managed Consulting Provider, to audit and analyze the company’s existing Citrix environments in several datacenters in Europe. Important findings were that many entities had chosen Citrix Presentation Server™ on a tactical level and had adopted the application delivery model. However, each country had its own architecture and applications, and the Citrix environments were not consistent. The environments as implemented were not designed to support the growth required by the consolidation.

Login Consultants and DHL introduced a global IT strategy and suitable architectural framework for application delivery using Citrix software. This architectural framework not only needed to improve stability and scalability and increase IT support efficiency, but also had to be very flexible to fit the complex and very large DHL hosted environment.

Optimize the Factory

Van Hoof explained, “At the end of 2005, we started the ‘optimize the factory´ program to right-scale IT, using the architectural framework designed by Login Consultants and the Citrix application delivery infrastructure solution. The project began with the largest datacenter in Prague, which has more than 2,000 servers and 1,800 IT specialists supporting 150,000 users and 1,200 applications. The first step was reengineering this environment by standardizing and consolidating servers and implementing the architectural framework with Citrix Presentation Server.

“Although the global Citrix architectural framework and design were developed in Prague, DHL´s Citrix specialists from other countries and datacenters participated in the project. We now use Citrix Presentation Server as a strategic solution for virtualizing delivery of almost all business applications. Currently, we have 36,000 concurrent licenses and virtualize about 700 business applications on Presentation Server for tens of thousands of users. Prague is now an example for the consolidation of other central and local datacenters.”

A Global Standard for Optimized Application Delivery

After the introduction of the Citrix framework in Prague, performance and stability improved due to server load balancing. Also, the workload of administrators was reduced through centralized management. The number of server silos and farms was also reduced and the configuration has been standardized. Server utilization more than doubled, from 5 percent to about 13 percent, by virtualizing applications using Presentation Server. This enabled the total number of servers to be reduced by 25 percent. The new environment saved about 18 percent in IT expenses and had a return on investment of six to nine months.

“Citrix Presentation Server guarantees an efficient and consistent access experience, no matter where the applications reside, where the users are, or what devices or networks they are using. Even business applications running over very slow lines — to Cameroon, for example — deliver good performance,” van Hoof said.

Business applications delivered using Presentation Server are seamlessly mixed with locally installed applications like Microsoft® Office in the same interface. They can be accessed on any device, including UNIX® workstations from HP that are connected to the LAN. In addition, DHL implemented 4,000 thin clients running a published desktop, which is ideal in the warehouse environment at the Logistics division and at the sorting hubs of DHL Aviation.

He added, “Some Web-based applications are used by hundreds of employees in many countries, which makes them tough to administer. We decided to deliver Web-based applications using Presentation Server to avoid conflicts in, for example, the Java environment, as well as to optimize data and simplify delivery and system administration.”

The implementation of the Citrix framework at DHL entities all over the world is an ongoing process as the concept is broadly adopted. The datacenters show organic growth as countries ask to add new applications to the central Citrix Presentation Server farms. In addition, thanks to its proven track record, Global IT Services is frequently asked to migrate other farms to the Citrix model.

Timely and Reliable Delivery of Parcels

DHL has three time-dispersed datacenters — in Scottsdale, Arizona, Prague and Cyberjaya in Malaysia — that allow for follow-the-sun services. Key global applications running on Presentation Server can be load-balanced across the three centers so that business continuity can be provided by any two surviving datacenters.

The most important application at DHL is used for loading aircraft at the sorting hubs of many airports. This application is also used to forward information about parcels to customs for clearance at the destination airport, so that officials know what is coming before the company’s airplanes arrive. “Application delivery to airport hubs is extremely time-critical in the DHL Express division. For example, even an hour’s downtime of this application during peak hours at the Brussels Airport costs us millions of euros. Without this shipment application, our airplanes cannot depart. Previously, outages occurred more frequently and it took longer to fix any issues. With Citrix load-balancing capability, the chance of downtime is much less than before,” concluded van Hoof.

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