Master plan

For a start, the sheer size of the project. Facing the Holy Mosque in Mecca, the KAEP development spreads across 15 million square metres, including a thirteen storey main building and seven towers.

All of the buildings in the project will be connected by a single, highly advanced converged network designed to support the latest in business management systems and other IP-based applications. The completed project will have more than 75,000 network outlets and 17 services will run on it providing for the various tenants of the towers including hotels, restaurants and residences.

Almost all network components that are part of KAEP went through a rigorous procedure of selection, testing and simulation before being actually implemented at the site.

KAEP has been built with the singular aim of using technology to provide for better and more efficient living conditions for residents of the project as well as visitors to Mecca. When completed, KAEP will be the biggest converged network in the Middle East, bringing together voice and data on a single network platform.

A large number of vendors are involved in the building and implementation of the networking infrastructure at KAEP. This includes some of the biggest global names in the industry. Many of these vendors believe that the project is setting standards for converged network implementation and at least one of them is using it as a global reference project for IP.

At the helm of this trend-setting project, involved in technology selection, and implementation is BT Applied Technology (BTAT). One of the largest system integrators in Saudi Arabia, BTAT has become the IT arm of the project – albeit an outsourced one – and has worked on the infrastructure right from the design and vendor selection phase, through pilots, implementation and maintenance.

According to Amr Taher, CEO of BTAT, though it has not always been an easy process, the company has worked at it, consistently combining expertise and well-defined process to make it a success.

Steps to success

“The project has hundreds of tenants. There are hotels, commercial shops, residential apartments and so on. The idea was really to build flexibility in terms of the services that will be provided and to ensure that they would meet the business requirements of all of these tenants. We worked towards that end with the converged network,” says Taher.

BTAT has been the IT decision maker from a very early stage and has ensured delivery on deadline for each phase.

“We had in place the network and the main datacentre around a year back. Well before the project is set to complete, we have pulled out of the site and there is now only a need for minimum manpower to take care of the technology until project completion,” adds Taher.

To achieve this level of operational efficiency, BTAT applied stringent processes to the project from day one.

“For the infrastructure we chose several vendors. We had requirements for which solutions were not readily available. Following the RFP process we picked the vendors who offered systems closest to what we required and put them through a development process to get our exact requirements,” says Taher.

BTAT chose Systimax for passive components along with its iPatch Intelligent Network Management tool. It chose Cisco for core switches and Nortel for edge switches. The company selected Juniper for the routers and servers were brought in from Dell and HP among others.

“Before selecting the vendors their products were put through the project lab at BTAT. All vendor components were used in a simulation of the actual project following which the supplier was chosen. We have maintained a diversity of providers within the project. The message we are trying to send to the market is that we are not vendor dependent. We believe in only setting up what we think is the best solution for the client,” adds Taher.

BTAT’s unique pre-staging facility helped the firm enforce a high level of efficiency during the implementation and trouble-shooting phases at KAEP.

All equipment was put through the pre-staging facility where it was configured, customised, tested and honed as close to the project’s definition of perfection as possible before being shifted to the site. This meant that the team just had to plug-and-play the infrastructure at the site, with minimal trouble-shooting.

“The pre-staging facility is equipped to handle large projects and enabled us to test and clarify equipment and infrastructure in a controlled yet rapid manner. This helped us in completing the core network elements, aggregation at the building level and even the datacentre, at minimum cost and maximum efficiency. Changes needed at this stage could also be performed in no time since we hold IT design and have at hand drawings for all conduiting, networking and infrastructure elements,” adds Taher.

The team also achieved high productivity levels in the deployment of the datacentre at KAEP’s site.

“We began on the datacentre sometime in 2005. We were in charge of everything connected with it including mechanical and civil work as well as technology. We have an entire professional team dedicated to datacentres which looked into every aspect including design, power and cooling, room conditions and so on,” says Taher.

BTAT built the datacentre to be fully redundant. The main towers will also have their own redundant centres in case of any failure in the core datacentre. BTAT is also in the process of building a disaster recovery site for KAEP which will be situated around 2km from the main project.

“The datacentre delivers all services across the network. We have kept tenant needs in mind while delivering services. For example, if the tenants operate on a low budget, then we reduce the specifications but ensure delivery at the edge,” says Taher.

The IP network handles almost all services connected with the running, maintenance and security of the buildings as well as people. This includes physical security including CCTV, access controls, telephony, utility metering systems, video on demand, public address systems, HVAC and BMS.

The network also enables the various people in the buildings to move within the project using a single identity card and even pay for products when it is completed.

Going over the bumps

Two towers of the project are already fully operational, with a few more scheduled to go live in two months time. The main podium is already up and running and the project is to be completed by the end of 2008.

According to Taher, it took the team only about two weeks to get the datacentre up and running at the site level.

“We had well defined processes through every stage covering vendor selection, procurement, development of infrastructure and services, pre-staging, implementation and integration. Part of the guarantee that we provide is that we won’t run into issues that would stop services from being up at the site level. With this in mind, we have minimised trouble-shooting and the success rate at the project is around 98% for the start up of all services. That’s a great achievement,” says Taher.

Around 300 people were involved in the initial phase of the project; the pre-staging and high calibre engineering phase included around 150 people. This latter group was involved in completing the design, documentation, solution engineering, configuration, systems integration and the development of necessary software, including a complex billing system for which BTAT has a patent pending.

“The whole project was a challenge from every point of view. At the time when we started, the idea of having everything on an IP network was considered crazy by many people and some vendors even warned us not to go that route. From that to running high end, individualised services on such a network has been a long journey. The automated systems we needed were not off-the-shelf solutions and a lot of thought and development had to go into them. All of these different systems had to be integrated and running smoothly. We developed a software packet with all services driven by an event model from one obligation – in other words, an occurrence out of the ordinary can act as a trigger for systems to react in certain ways,” says Taher.

He adds that the biggest challenges though came in the form of the billing system and getting end users to utilise the features offered by the network.

“Billing involved a lot of complicated scenarios and we had to develop a system that was capable of handling all of them. We also had to make the tenants understand the power that they had with the IP network,” he says.

Running the show

All the hard work however has paid off. Structured requirements, stringent procurement and testing processes, combined with development and integration skills has enabled BTAT to manage the onsite element of the project with minimal resources.

“We have around ten people operating the project in terms of infrastructure maintenance. There are around 30 technicians present to address customer queries. The rest is handled by our intelligent datacentre which is capable of proactively providing knowledge on any possible failures in the network and also correcting the mistake. We can actually alert the client before he knows of any problem. The datacentre is also connected to our offices to enable remote management,” says Taher.

Network management systems are split but Taher says that it will be unified under HP OpenView once the remaining towers go live.

“There might be some change in network components in the remaining two towers. In the last two years, technology has changed. We believe that the project infrastructure is flexible. But there are new requirements that can be met only with products which are not present in the project now. We will be moving in this direction for the two remaining towers,” says Taher.

BTAT will bring its self-styled operational efficiency to the remaining towers and, backed by its expertise, the company believes it is difficult to envision failure.

“We have deployed one of the largest intelligent networks worldwide and we have it operating successfully. What more would you need for BTAT’s assurance of efficiency and quality?,” asks Taher.