Within this organization, the Court Service Development Division (CSDD) is responsible for providing IT services and support to meet the requirements of the department. A recent project, for example, has been the design, build and installation of the CREST system, handling the entire administrative process of the Crown Court, including finances, personnel and court Listings. The system also provides connection between the headquarters in London and over eighty regional sites. The processing power to manage this and other CSDD systems is provided by a range of UNIX machines, including Siemens Nixdorf, Digital, Hewlett Packard and DG Aviion.

According to Metron's consultants, Lord Chancellor's Department: "With the increasing number of systems which we are installing and their importance to the efficient and effective running of the Department, we wanted to support them with a computerized Capacity Management system, rather than relying on such basic methods as manual trend analysis and workload projections.

"From the products we tested, we decided on the Athene package. This software was installed in September 1993 following an initial consultancy study which Metron undertook for us, to demonstrate the capabilities of the product." To date, Athene/Unix has been used by the Lord Chancellor's Department on a number of specific Capacity Management projects. Once of these has involved the assessment of the various options available for improving performance in a particular system by either investing in additional hardware or changing the workloads. Athene has been used as the means of collecting, analyzing and presenting the alternatives and their implications.

One of Metron's consultants commented: "Using Athene doesn’t require an in-depth understanding of the UNIX operating system environment. In fact anyone with just a basic grasp of UNIX is able to understand the workings of the software and quickly begin to use it.

"However, perhaps the most important aspect of Athene is its use of graphics to represent complex data. It is possible to see in an instant the results of any tests and therefore to make much faster decisions on what is the best course of action. The emphasis on graphical presentation makes it very straightforward for us to produce a wide range of demonstrations, from high level management reports to detailed technical analyzes, whichever is the most appropriate for the audience."

One of Metron's consultants concluded: "I should also mention that Metron's ActionLine support services are first class. The help provided by the staff is always very informative and very friendly."