With the globalization of the telecommunications market, Italtel had to expand internationally in order to compete successfully. To do so, Italtel management felt that it should "flatten" the organization, moving from a hierarchical structure to one in which employees are empowered with all the tools and information they need to do their jobs better, thereby improving customer service and time to market.

In addition to the business challenges associated with international expansion, the company faces several technical challenges. Sweeping changes spurred by the convergence of communication and information technologies force Italtel to innovate faster than ever before. As a result, Italtel needs to share knowledge and information and improve communication throughout the company - all within a distributed, extremely heterogeneous computing environment. This environment includes a wide range of client systems, such as Unix workstations and PCs running Windows 3.1, 95, and NT, and servers that include Digital, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Sun, and Windows NT-based systems. The company needed a new information technology solution that would provide global information access, flexibility, and ease of use. Among the goals for the new system were to create a centralized, easily accessible source for all company information resources, to monitor the company's telecommunications services and network online for better performance, to organize training courses, and to set up working groups in different departments.

Netscape Solution
Italtel selected key components of the Netscape SuiteSpot server software family to deploy an enterprisewide intranet and messaging solution. Netscape Enterprise Server distributes web-based intranet and Internet services. "Netscape Enterprise Server was the obvious choice for the basis of our intranet, particularly because it is easy to configure, due to its web-based interface. Its powerful remote web publishing features enable us to provide virtual servers for internal departments that cannot afford their own physical web servers for reasons such as costs or lack of skills," says Diana Scagni, intranet webmaster, Italtel.

Netscape Proxy Server controls user access to the public Internet, dispatches intranet traffic, and caches the information accessed most. "Proxy Server is easy to maintain and manage. Its overall features and configuration are very flexible, and its open architecture has allowed us to use plug-ins and tailor the server specifically to meet our needs," says Massimo Cesaro, network manager, Italtel.

The company has deployed Netscape News Server for managing its private newsgroups. Netscape Messaging Server standardizes POP/IMAP4 mail servers on subnetworks, and Netscape Directory Server is used to implement an LDAP repository of companywide information integrated with Proxy access authentication. Directory Server currently handles 5,000 entries but will eventually contain the entire Italtel personnel list of over 16,000 people. The client software is primarily Netscape Navigator 3.0 and Netscape Communicator Pro. "Netscape software made it easier to deploy our intranet across a heterogeneous environment, because of Netscape's multiplatform approach. We also believe that Netscape has a cohesive vision for where the industry is going," says Mapelli.

Messaging Server will eventually serve the enterprise email needs of 75 percent of the company's users, and Italtel plans to take advantage of IMAP to provide employees that must connect over slow links with an efficient and intelligent way to manage time, disk space, and email accounts. "The major benefit of IMAP is the ability to have consistent logins from multiple computers. This allows for better, location-free management of each person's email account, independently of which physical workstation is in use. Also, IMAP will help us deliver a highly reliable service across the enterprise because of its ability to back up email on the server," explains Franco Urero, communication manager, Italtel.

The Italtel intranet provides a central source of information and is the starting point for reaching all resources, applications, and centralized departmental servers. Called 14web, the intranet provides a wealth of information and services and acts as a bridge linking the company's heterogeneous computing environment. Among other things, Italtel employees can now access a company directory and all Italtel technical product documentation is online, providing access to the most current product information and contributing to improved customer service. For the company's directory alone, it is estimated that Italtel has saved 50 percent of the printing costs it previously incurred. Employees can also book training courses online and can view product demonstrations. In addition, the intranet is the company's vehicle of choice for distributing software, including antivirus software, Communicator Pro, document templates, and more. This new online process has saved the company thousands of dollars in software distribution and maintenance costs.

To improve customer service and telephone network performance, many of the company's plants and networks are monitored online. For example, Raccolta Allarmi Linea UT lets employees monitor the alarms of the company's Linea UT plants connected to a test network. Users can query an alarm database, using a web-based form to further investigate the switching-system topology, software release, and other important diagnostic parameters. Rete Pilota DECT Italtel allows employees to monitor the company's RFP (Radio Fixed Part) antennas and gauge the traffic on Italtel's cordless telephone pilot network. Graphical layouts of the network are updated each night with different colors depicting traffic values and links. Emulatore ES simulates the behavior of an offline telephone switching exchange system. The actual switching system manages users and the traffic of the switching system itself through MML (Machine Man Language) commands. The simulator lets software developers and testers more rapidly test and develop new MML software applications and reduce the time to market, because they now have immediate access to the simulator directly from Communicator. These and other intranet-based applications allow Italtel to improve customer service and keep its networks and services running at their peak.

Italtel has also developed Electronic Press Review, a daily internal publication distributed in Adobe PDF format. It is archived so that employees can search for articles and create reviews of specific topics. The company is working to develop a corporate user profile database, based on Directory Server and the LDAP protocol. All profiles will be set up automatically, collecting information from every departmental server and consolidating all employee information into a central employee database. "We expect this central repository to save us many man-hours per week in system administration and maintenance costs," Scagni says.

Solution Architecture
14web has evolved over a period of nearly three years. Over this time, Italtel has adopted increasingly powerful hosts and software applications to enhance end-user services, from both a features and a traffic performance standpoint. Older applications that access back-end Oracle databases are CGI-based applications written in TCL and Perl that perform queries. The intranet applications in use today are based on Oracle development technologies and tools, but a trial is underway to access back-end Oracle databases through applications written in JavaScript and developed with Netscape LiveWire Pro. "We're looking at ways to more quickly assemble web-based applications and are beginning to work with Netscape's products and development tools," says Scagni.

For Italtel, this is just the beginning. The company has already reaped benefits from its intranet infrastructure, including improved customer service, reduced administration and information distribution costs and the ability to share information across a highly heterogeneous computing environment. As 14web evolves, Italtel plans increasingly to use it for multimedia-intensive collaboration and workgroup applications. "We've gone a long way toward empowering employees with the tools they need to get their jobs done better, " says Mapelli. "Our Netscape intranet is the foundation that will take us into the next century."

NETSCAPE SOFTWARE	HARDWARE	THIRD-PARTY SOFTWARE
Enterprise Server Proxy Server Messaging Server Directory Server Communicator Pro Navigator Composer LiveWire Pro	Servers: Digital, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Sun, and Windows NT-based systems Clients: Various Unix workstations; PCs running Windows 3.1, 95, and NT	Oracle database Perl TCL