We needed a way to consolidate this image data and make it universally available across our distributed network of hospitals.”
- Dan Baldock, Senior VP and CIO, Banfield Pet Hospital

Banfield Pet Hospital was challenged by all of its digital x-ray and ultrasound images stored locally at each of 500 disparate locations across the country. They had no way to share those images among all of the 780 Banfield pet hospitals. There was no backup or disaster recovery plan in place, so the medical data was at risk of loss if a hard drive failed. Telemedicine (getting a second opinion from a radiologist working remotely) was slow, expensive, and many veterinarians were not taking advantage of the service to improve patient care. “We needed a way to consolidate this image data and make it universally available across our distributed network of hospitals,” said Dan Baldock, Senior VP and CIO of Banfield Pet Hospital.

Banfield Pet Hospital is a network of 780 veterinary hospitals located throughout the United States. Banfield partners with PetSmart, the nation’s largest pet-related retailer, and operates pet hospitals inside PetSmart stores.

First Step: Centralize and Protect Digital Images

To solve these challenges, Banfield implemented a centralized PACS system (Picture Archiving and Communication System) at its headquarters in Portland, Oregon. They selected the open source software ClearCanvas as both the back-end archiving system and as the front-end viewer. Banfield had the support of the team at ClearCanvas and leveraged their existing in-house resources and expertise to develop and deploy the system. The only additional staff they needed to hire was a single PACS Administrator to aid in the setup and ongoing administration of the system.

Banfield set up the infrastructure for all 500 digital x-ray and ultrasound machines across the country to transmit images over a WAN to their centralized servers for long-term storage. They set up redundant, mirrored server and storage infrastructure with daily and monthly backup processes to protect the data. In addition, once that data was centralized, they implemented a disaster recovery plan for failover to a remote site in Arizona. Now the medical imaging data (x-ray and ultrasound images) is protected and readily accessible.

Data centralization also allowed Banfield to implement nationwide image sharing. Many clients are very mobile across the country. The hospital has countless stories of truckers that drive nationwide with their pets or snowbirds that go south with their pets for the winter. Having the ability for images taken at any Banfield hospital to be viewed with the click of a button at any other Banfield hospital has improved dramatically the continuity of care their veterinarians could provide.

Second Step: Telemedicine

With the foundational PACS system in place, Banfield then implemented a robust tele­medicine system. To do this, they custom-built a RIS system (Radiology Information System) to track the requests for telemedicine consults, allow the radiologist or other specialist to view the cases, and communicate the consultation results back to the requesting veterinarian and team. They partnered with various veterinarian telemedicine vendors, even designing a custom integration with one to send cases that could be read in their existing system.

By building this RIS system, they were able to improve the turnaround time of telemedicine consultation results getting back to the hospital to an average of 30 minutes for STAT cases (emergency cases) and 90 minutes for routine cases. Historically the turnaround time was hours to days. This made an enormous impact at the point of care for the veterinarians and their clients and patients to have a specialist give a second opinion as needed on a case to improve the treatment decision-making process.

In the end, Banfield was able to save millions of dollars in the first few years by selecting the ClearCanvas technology and leveraging their existing resources. Since the initial imple­mentation, they have also expanded the PACS system to include digital dental x-ray images after adding 60+ digital dental x-ray units to its hospitals. The system was built to be very scalable so they could add different types of imaging equipment and allow for the growth of new hospitals. Banfield has been opening about 50 new hospitals per year and will continue to do so. They are also in the process of implementing another feature, DICOM CD burn, using another ClearCanvas product. “The solution we chose has really allowed us to grow in many directions,” added Baldock.

Next Step: Integration with EMR

The future for PACS, RIS, telemedicine and all imaging systems at Banfield Pet Hospital holds even greater promise. The next step is to integrate the imaging systems with Banfield’s proprietary EMR (electronic medical record system) called PetWare. The goal will be to integrate images that reside in ClearCanvas PACS and radiology telemedicine consultation results directly into the EMR. The solution will also allow them to integrate images into their client/patient portal system, so clients can view their pets’ images.

 Copyright © 2011 Apropos LLC. All rights reserved.

We stress the point that there is no such thing as an IT project. Every project starts with a vision for the member experience that we desire and then works backwards to the technology.”
- Butch Leonardson, Senior VP and CIO, BECU

The credit union BECU took an unorthodox approach to defining its next-generation IT system. BECU sent 10 people from its member solutions group whose primary job was engaging with credit union members to the Disney Institute in Florida for professional training and to develop an IT vision. These were non-technical and non-senior management personnel. “Their charter was to come back with a dream of a member care framework for how we can provide an exceptional experience to our members,” said Butch Leonardson, Senior VP and CIO of BECU.

BECU, headquartered in Tukwila, Washington, is a community charter credit union in the state of Washington. It has 50 branches, 1,000 employees and 730,000 members, the majority of which are clustered around the Interstate 5 corridor in Western Washington.

While it may be unusual to assign staff other than IT and senior management with the task of proposing a major new IT system, it was consistent with BECU’s “outside-in” IT philosophy. Leonardson elaborated, “We stress the point that there is no such thing as an IT project. Every project starts with a vision for the member experience that we desire and then works backwards to the technology.” From this perspective, it made sense to start the IT project with the personnel who were most directly engaged with credit union members.

More to the point, it worked. The group came back with a compelling vision for a member care framework consisting of three parts: Member View which presents a holistic view of each member’s accounts and transactions; Member Interaction Tracking which presents a current summary of all communications and interactions with the credit union; and Member Access which automatically ranks members based on financial metrics and determines their eligibility for products and rates.

Member Care Framework

To implement this framework, BECU needed a software platform that could bring together information from many disparate applications and present it in a unified manner. They selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM because it seemed lighter weight and more developer friendly and cost less than competitive alternatives. They also liked Microsoft’s roadmap for developing and evolving the product.

Member View was the first component they developed. Prior to Member View, when a credit union member walked into a branch or called on the phone, the member consultant or call center representative did not have an up-to-date, 360-degree view of that person’s transactional activity. They could get it, but it would take several minutes of cutting and pasting across multiple applications to assemble a complete picture because the transactions came from a variety of channels, such as online, phone, mobile and ATM. Like most medium-sized banks, BECU used commercially-available software and transactional data was spread across many applications supporting these channels. Member View brought all of that data together in a holistic view.

Member Interaction Tracking followed. It presented a similar holistic view of communications between members and the credit union. “If you have a conversation with us or you attempt to do something online or on the phone through our integrated voice response system, we know about the conversation and we also know where you dropped off attempting to do something. So when you reach a representative, that representative knows exactly where you abandoned the automated process,” said Leonardson. Therefore callers do not have to re-identify themselves or re-explain what they were attempting to do before switching to a live representative.

The third component, Member Access, made it easier to present each member with a customized set of products and rates. By leveraging business intelligence (BI) software to analyze financial metrics such as account balances, credit scores, and how long that person has been with the credit union, Member Access automatically determined a member’s eligibilities.

Proof Is in the Pudding

When the member care framework was complete, it presented a current summary of member transactions, interactions and relevant product eligibilities in a single view. Member consultants loved it because it made their jobs easier and streamlined interactions with members. BECU even won an IT award for the system. What about the credit union members themselves? While they do not interact directly with the system, they seem to like their experience with BECU. The credit union’s net promoter score, which measures how likely members are to recommend it to friends and family, is in the 75% range as compared to 25 to 35% for major banks, according to Leonardson. BECU also adds 7,000 to 8,000 new members per month. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak.

Toward One-Click Fulfillment

Yet BECU is not standing still. After using the system for 2 or 3 years, member consultants began to ask if they could also execute transactions directly within Member View. Now BECU is layering a portal on top its transactional applications and integrating them with Member View. “It solves the problem that most branches and call centers worldwide have, which is whatever you want me to do, Mr. Customer, I need to go into that application to get it done. Car loans, mortgages, Visa cards are all different systems. Now this portal will homogenize everything and make it all look like one environment,” said Leonardson.

Ultimately BECU’s wants to achieve what they call “one-click fulfillment.” This refers to an end-to-end digital enterprise that eliminates the need for written forms and signatures. The goal is to minimize process and maximize engage­ment with credit union members.

We think what we do as leaders is more than lead functions. We lead hearts and minds.”
- Butch Leonardson

Hearts and Minds

Leonardson considers the journey of developing this member care framework to be a tangible aspect of his greater concern as CIO for the IT organization’s shared values and morale: “Do I have seventy five people who wake up in the morning and say, ‘Wow, I have a great gig.’ I think a vast majority of people have a desire to be valued, to be in the middle of something important. And if you can provide that authentically, you are going to have a great organization. That is the center of my gravity as a leader.”

“Somebody called me a unicorn CIO because the stuff I think about is so different from most CIOs. If you looked at the org chart for our IT organization, it would look very normal. We have two VPs and seven managers. There is nothing unique about the way we are organized. We think what we do as leaders is more than lead functions. We lead hearts and minds,” he said.

 Copyright © 2011 Apropos LLC. All rights reserved.

We had all this hardware running and were going to replace it every three to five years, but it wasn’t really getting used. We were never going to wear it out.“
- Dustin Rowe, IT Manager and Technology Planner,
PAE Consulting Engineers

The Drive to Virtualize

For PAE Consulting Engineers, the drive to virtualize began with realizing that its distributed server architecture was only 10% utilized. The company was running 20 application workloads on eight physical servers. Since mission-critical applications were distributed among the servers, this architecture offered a reasonable degree of high availability. Restarting one application, such as Microsoft Exchange, did not require bringing down other critical applications, such as Microsoft SQL Server or Active Directory. The downside was that these servers were poorly utilized. As servers are normally replaced every few years, the company was locked into a cycle of overbuying hardware and recycling still-usable equipment. “Virtualization takes advantage of that downtime. That is what drove us forward,” said Dustin Rowe, IT Manager and Technology Planner for PAE Consulting Engineers. “We had all this hardware running and were going to replace it every three to five years, but it wasn’t really getting used. We were never going to wear it out.”

At the same time, the company had about 35 traditional desktop PCs with Intel Pentium 4 processors that had reached end-of-life and needed to be replaced. These PCs ran applications with moderate processing requirements, such as email, web browsing and project management. Here they saw an opportunity to also consider virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) instead of a typical PC upgrade. “As we moved forward, we realized that by virtualizing our application servers, we would free up hardware that could be used to explore virtual desktop systems, which we thought might be able to meet the needs of these people with traditional desktops,” said Rowe.

PAE Consulting Engineers, Inc., is a mechanical and electrical engineering firm that specializes in sustainable, efficient, “green” building design. The company is based in Portland, Oregon, and has a satellite office in San Francisco, California.

Virtual Machines, Virtual Desktops and Zero Clients

Working with a local computer consulting company called Tech Heads, PAE Consulting Engineers looked closely at various options for server virtualization and VDI, including Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix and VMware. At the time Hyper-V lacked some features they wanted. Citrix would have required eight servers to support the application workloads and desktop virtualization, while VMware could do it with half the number. They also found VMware to be very easy to use. Performing physical-to-virtual migrations and provisioning virtual machines were straightforward, simple tasks. For a small business with one IT manager handling the entire infrastructure, this was an important factor. Furthermore, pricing for virtualization software had dropped a point where it was realistic for the company’s IT budget.

The company chose VMware vSphere for server virtualization, VMware View for desktop virtualization and ClearCube I9422 Zero Clients at the desktop. VMware vSphere is the leading platform for server virtualization. VMware View is a desktop virtualization platform that runs Windows sessions centrally on a server and streams the display data over the network to client devices. In this case, the client devices were ClearCube Zero Clients that reside at each user’s desk and perform the role of a PC except for storage and processing. These devices communicate with the View server over the network using a streamlined PCoIP display protocol that facilitates a fluid screen presentation. They provide a single restart button and support dual monitors, keyboard, mouse and peripherals.

Easier to Manage and Less Costly to Operate

With the new virtual environment, PAE Consulting Engineers consolidated its original eight application servers down to two VMware servers running the same 20 application workloads in virtual machines. This was a major improvement in hardware utilization and delivered cost savings that would carry forward into the future as they only needed to replace two servers instead of eight when they reached end-of-life. Three additional servers ran VMware View to support nearly 30 virtual desktops. Two of the servers were required to support the workload and the third was for redundancy and failover purposes. Rather than purchase new hardware, they added processors, memory and network cards to the existing servers and redeployed them, thus minimizing costs for the transition to the virtual infrastructure.

They also added two IBM DS3500 Express storage systems, dedicating one for the application servers and the other for the virtual desktop system. Beyond storage consolidation and high availability, SAN storage allowed them to derive more benefits from server virtualization. For instance, the VMware vMotion feature in a SAN environment can migrate applications live between servers without disrupting user access. “We moved Microsoft Exchange in the middle of the work day with seventy people running email through it, and no one could even tell it moved to a different server,” he said.

At the relatively small scale of the company’s virtual desktop environment, hardware costs as compared to traditional PCs were break-even. While Zero Clients cost less than PCs and have a longer expected life of 7 to 10 years since they lack moving parts, the VMware View servers and SAN storage also factored in to the total cost.

The greatest benefit PAE Consulting Engineers experienced from VDI was simplified management and reduced IT supports costs. Rowe continued, “Now IT has one place to go take care of hardware. Aside from training and educating users on the end point, we nearly never have to go to the desk. That foot traffic is an incredible amount of time for the IT staff. You’re up and constantly going to a different machine to do something physically that is unnecessary with the technology we are using these days. We can do everything from our remote session. And as you scale the business, it becomes more and more valuable – by an order of magnitude.”

Windows functionality for virtual desktop users was identical to traditional PCs, though it took time for users to adjust to some differences in the interface. For instance, when restarting a computer, users only saw a welcome screen instead of one proclaiming that Windows is restarting, so they wondered if the computer was working correctly. While issues like this did not affect productivity, they required some changes in how users interacted with the system. Most workers used ClearCube Zero Clients as client devices. A handful of people used an Apple laptop or mobile device as their main computer and ran a View software client for occasional Windows access.

A surprising benefit of virtualization was the ability to extend the useful life of server hardware. Normally servers are replaced when the warranty expires after 3 to 5 years because warranty costs becomes prohibitive as the hardware ages. But with redundant servers and components and the ease of moving workloads around in a virtual environment, it becomes possible to continue using servers outside of warranty until they fail, then replace them. “We can be more flexible and let the hardware push us to replace, not the warranty,” said Rowe. However, a thoughtful recovery plan should be in place to do this. The company knows which of its applications are mission-critical and which can afford a little downtime in case of a hardware failure and recovery scenario.

Virtualization is a big deal. It is literally everything that it proposed itself to be.”
- Dustin Rowe

Another benefit they experienced was energy efficiency and lower electricity costs. The ClearCube Zero Clients consume only 15 W of power compared to 100 W for the PCs they replaced, which reduced power and heat dissipation at the desktop by 85% and eliminated noise from fans and hard drives. The tasks of computer processing and storage were transferred to three 300 W servers and a SAN storage array. Even including this hardware in the calculation, the power consumption per desktop was still reduced by approximately 50%.

Potentially More to Come

to the future, Rowe noted that the industry is developing server offload cards for graphics processing that could open the door to run CAD and sophisticated graphic design applications in the virtual desktop environment. Currently the workers using these applications have workstations with 3D graphics cards that perform the heavy-duty processing because it would be too slow and choppy to run these applications on a central server. But if high-performance graphics processing were available for the View servers, the company could consolidate the remainder of its desktops and further streamline the IT infrastructure.

“Personally it is very exciting to see legitimate advancements in technology,” he added. “For a long time, there hasn’t been anything to really change the way we think about how hardware should operate and when we’re going to replace it. But virtualization is a big deal. It is literally everything that it proposed itself to be. It just takes using it a while to really see.”

 Copyright © 2011 Apropos LLC. All rights reserved.

They were spending a significant amount of money on toner cartridges, repairs and buying the actual printers.“
- Brian Bradbury, Business Partner in IT organization at Smiths Group

*

A Proliferation of Printers

At Transtector headquarters in Hayden Lake, Idaho, print devices were numerous and abundant. “We had 76 different print devices at this location,” said Brian Bradbury, Business Partner in the IT organization at Smiths Group, Transtector’s parent company. “It was a wide variety of items, from laser printers to scanners, fax machines to desktop printers. There must have been six or eight different brand names and as many as forty or fifty different models of devices. So you can imagine what it was like to try to keep track of the toner cartridges and repairs of those devices as they needed assistance.”

Transtector Systems is a manufacturer of power protection products, including signal protection, EMP/EMI filters, power distribution units (PDU) and uninterruptible power supplies (UPS). Transtector is a subsidiary of Smiths Group, a global technology conglomerate based in London, England, that operates in more than 50 countries.  Smiths’ annual revenue is $7 billion, and Transtector represents $80 million of that amount.

A proliferation of printers is common in enterprises, especially when purchasing decisions are decentralized. You can imagine how it might happen: The sales team decides to buy inkjet printers for their desks. The accounting department has its own laser printer, and accounts receivable and accounts payable each have dedicated fax machines. Marketing invests in a scanner and color laser printer. And so it goes until print devices are ubiquitous.

From the perspective of Transtector’s users, the situation seemed to work well. The company had an agreement with a VAR to receive discounted pricing for top-model, brand-name printers. When printer ink ran low, employees used an expense report to buy new cartridges, and when a print device wore out, they bought a new one. This ad hoc approach met their basic printing needs.

“It is only when you reviewed the costs from the top-down that you see the impact to the overall organization,” noted Bradbury. “They were spending a significant amount of money on toner cartridges, repairs and buying the actual printers.”

Shared, Consolidated Printing Solution on Lease

As a member of Smiths centralized IT organization, Bradbury’s job was to present corporate best practices and special pricing agreements to Transtector and help manage implementations. Smiths had negotiated a contract with the printer manufacturer Ricoh to visit Smiths’ portfolio companies, review their printer needs and spending and supply consolidated printing “kits” on lease that would deliver hard savings. The kits included Ricoh Aficio multi-function printers as well as ongoing equipment maintenance and toner.

All I do is buy the paper and pay the use fee on the lease, and it saves five thousand dollars a month as we move forward.“
- Brian Bradbury

A team from IKON, Ricoh’s document management subsidiary, performed an assessment of Transtector and proposed a kit that would consolidate print devices dramatically. Transtector approved it and the new solution was rolled out. “We ended up with 12 devices instead of 76. They are multi-function devices placed strategically throughout our facility. I don’t maintain it. All I do is buy the paper and pay the use fee on the lease, and it saves five thousand dollars a month as we move forward,” said Bradbury.

As part of the maintenance process, IKON monitored printer usage and performance. Their technicians noticed that 3 of the 12 devices were outputting higher than anticipated print counts. So IKON swapped them out for larger models that could maintain higher levels of printing without overtaxing the equipment. “They do a fantastic job of maintaining the process, reviewing it and making sure each location has the equipment necessary for the particular demand,” he said.

Everyone Pleased, Eventually

Transtector executives and financial staff were pleased with the $5,000 monthly savings and positive contribution to profit margins, though users initially had difficulty seeing the value of removing the printers from their desk or immediate work area and putting one 20 feet down the hall. It just seemed inconvenient. However, they eventually warmed up to the value of higher availability and faster repair times. If a print device had a problem, users no longer had to roll up their sleeves and try to troubleshoot it. Instead they submitted a helpdesk ticket and Ricoh/IKON technicians took care of it. They could send print jobs to next closest printer in the meantime. After a few months of experiencing the consistency and low hassle of a shared and externally-maintained printing solution, users also felt positive about it.

Successful IT projects like this also build credibility and make Bradbury’s job easier as he proposes new initiatives from Smiths’ IT organization. Winning acceptance for projects often requires overcoming people’s natural resistance to change. “As you have successes, as you show value, they start to believe your presentations back to the business, if you are consistent in delivery as projects move forward,” he said.

 Copyright © 2011 Apropos LLC. All rights reserved.

As the IT group, you can do a good job with the technology, but it is the cultural change, the enthusiastic adoption by doctors and staff, that really makes it a success.“
- Adrienne Edens, Chief Information Officer, St. Luke’s Health System

Toward Timely Transcription

As part of a new consolidated PACS installation for archiving digital images, St. Luke’s Health System wanted to implement a speech recognition technology for its radiology group to accelerate reporting and facilitate more responsive patient care. At the time, the turnaround time for manually transcribing a radiologist’s dictation averaged seven hours. Patients had to wait that much longer for the results of an x-ray or other medical image. “The goal of speech recognition was to eliminate transcription and shorten this process,” said Adrienne Edens, Chief Information Officer for St. Luke’s.

St. Luke’s Health System is an Idaho-based, not-for-profit health care provider for southern and central Idaho, northern Nevada and eastern Oregon. It operates medical centers in Boise, Meridian, Magic Valley, McCall and Wood River as well as more than 70 clinics. St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center is Idaho’s largest hospital, and St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital is the only children’s hospital in the state.

St. Luke’s medical imaging process involved several steps. When a physician ordered a medical image, a technician performed the scan and sent the image to a radiologist for diagnosis. The radiologist dictated an audio report that was forwarded to the transcriptionists. After the text version came back, the radiologist approved it and the official report and diagnosis went to the referring physician and became part of the patient’s medical record.

Manual transcription was the most time-consuming step. If automated speech recognition could mitigate or even eliminate the need for it, the overall time to deliver a diagnosis could be reduced dramatically.

Speech Recognition Development

Speech recognition technology has been in development for decades. Programming a computer to recognize and decipher human speech is particularly complex and challenging. While the accuracy rate has improved over time, progress has been slow and incremental. Today, the technology has advanced to a point where it is a viable for certain applications. “Even in the last couple of years the technology has come a long way,” said Dan Talley, IT Service Team Leader for St. Luke’s.

Collaborative Approach

St. Luke’s took a collaborative approach for reviewing options and approving a speech recognition system. All stakeholders had a seat at the table: the IT group who would manage it, the hospital administrators who oversaw budgeting and compliance, and the radiologists who would ultimately use the system as part of their jobs. They also enlisted Santa Rosa Consulting, an IT and management consulting firm for the healthcare industry, to provide guidance and expertise in this area.

From the beginning, the radiologists were active proponents of a speech recognition system. “It was not administration saying we needed the system, or even IT. The radiologists were the most enthusiastic advocates,” said Edens.

RadWhere from Nuance Healthcare

After considering several speech recognition solutions, the project team chose RadWhere from Nuance Healthcare. RadWhere is a speech recognition solution with reporting and workflow management designed specifically for radiology. The software transcribes a radiologist’s dictation in real-time, thereby speeding up report writing. It includes templates and macros based on procedure codes for structuring the reports. RadWhere’s workflow engine also automatically routes documents through the creation, review and delivery process.

To roll out the system, the IT group installed software on the radiologists’ workstations and the primary RadWhere application on a host server that is replicated to a remote site for disaster recovery. If a failure occurs at the local site, the system will fail over and continue to provide service to the radiology group. Furthermore, each user had to “train” the system to understand his or her voice by speaking scripts into the computer.

The radiologists were quick to incorporate the new system into their routine. “Normally these types of projects are phased in slowly, but in this case, radiology no longer needed transcriptionists after only two weeks,” said Talley.

It felt great to experience such an improvement, especially after being a part of this project.“
- Dan Talley, IT Service Team Leader, St. Luke’s Health System

More Responsive Patient Care For Less

As a result of the fast adoption, the benefits to St. Luke’s and its patients accrued quickly. The average turnaround time for radiology reports dropped from 7 hours to about 30 minutes. St. Luke’s is saving $450,000 per year in radiology transcription costs for the Treasure Valley alone (Boise, Meridian and surrounding areas). Most significantly, patients receive faster and more responsive care.

Talley gave a personal example. His elderly mother had fallen down occasionally in the past, and Talley would take her to the hospital for an x-ray. Typically they had to wait hours for the results, but the last time this happened, after the speech recognition system was in place, the x-ray and diagnosis came back in only 20 minutes. “It felt great to experience such an improvement, especially after being a part of this project,” he said.

Edens added, “We are thrilled and wish all of our IT projects went this well. We give the radiologists credit for the success. As the IT group, you can do a good job with the technology, but it is the cultural change, the enthusiastic adoption by doctors and staff, that really makes it a success.”

Based on the success of the RadWhere system, St. Luke’s is looking at standardizing on Nuance technology for all of its medical speech recognition applications.

 Copyright © 2011 Apropos LLC. All rights reserved.

It took more than all night to do tape backups of the data. They would roll over into the daytime and really affect mail flow and access time to files on the file server.“
- Adam Falk, Director of Technical Operations, Arlie & Company

Toward More Robust and Efficient IT

After a period of fast growth, Arlie & Company founds its server and storage infrastructure no longer provided the robustness and efficiency that the business needed. Nightly tape backups did not complete within the backup window. “It took more than all night to do tape backups of the data. They would roll over into the daytime and really affect mail flow and access time to files on the file server,” said Adam Falk, Director of Technical Operations for Arlie & Company. The servers were not configured for redundancy and failover, so the company was at risk of losing access to applications like email and printing potentially for days if the server hardware failed and had to be replaced. Furthermore, CPU and memory utilization on the servers was very low, and Falk felt the assets were not being well-utilized.

Arlie & Company is a privately-owned real estate development and management company based in Eugene, Oregon. By mid-2008, the company had doubled in size over a period of six years, reaching 28 employees, and was planning to double again. It was at this time they decided to upgrade the IT infrastructure.

The existing infrastructure consisted of two Windows servers running with about a half terabyte each of internal hard drive storage. One was a Dell PowerEdge 2800, a high-availability tower server with dual Intel Xeon processors, running Microsoft Small Business Server which included Exchange, SharePoint, the domain controller and a public-facing FTP site. The company had purchased it three years prior with the idea of growing into it. The other server was running Windows file and print services.

VMware and NetApp as Foundation

To address the problems of performance, resiliency and efficiency, Falk proposed two key technologies: server virtualization and consolidated, shared storage. After reviewing multiple products, they decided to purchase and install VMware vSphere 4 and a NetApp FAS2020 storage platform.

VMware is the market-leading server virtualization platform. It partitions a physical server into multiple virtual machines, each of which acts as a discrete server environment. Virtual machines are far easier to create, delete and move than physical machines and provide greater flexibility and higher server utilization.

The NetApp FAS2020 is a unified storage platform that includes both SAN and NAS, block and file storage, in one system. The FAS2020 supports iSCSI and Fibre Channel block protocols and CIFS, NFS and FTP file protocols. It expands to 12 disk drives internally and 68 drives overall through external expansion units. It runs NetApp’s Data ONTAP operating system that offers space-efficient differential snapshots and numerous other data management and protection features.

Arlie & Company based its upgraded IT infrastructure around the FAS2020 as a centralized, shared storage platform that connects to servers and clients over a Gigabit Ethernet network. Six of the twelve internal drive slots in the FAS2020 contain 1 TB SATA drives, and the others are available for future expansion. The drives are configured for redundancy using a combination of double-parity RAID and internal mirroring. Some storage capacity is allocated as a Windows file share accessed via CIFS for storing documents, photos, etc. The remainder is dedicated to iSCSI LUNs for VMware virtual machines. NetApp is integrated with Windows and VMware at the functional and management layers, enabling these technologies to leverage each other’s functionality and minimizing the learning curve for IT administrators. Of the storage platforms that Falk evaluated, the FAS2020 was the most tightly integrated with VMware and Windows.

The two existing host servers were repurposed to run Windows Server 2008 and VMware. Each has dual Gigabit Ethernet ports for high-bandwidth connections to clients and storage. The servers boot off USB drives and then access their primary storage over the network on the FAS2020. (Network boot for VMware is also an option available today.) Exchange, SharePoint, the FTP server, web presence, and primary and secondary domain controllers now run in virtual machines distributed between the two servers. In addition, VMware has a large community that provides free virtualized applications, where Falk found ProjectPier, an open-source, web-based application for project collaboration and task management. He installed ProjectPier in a virtual machine and saved $50 per month the company used to pay for a commercial hosted project collaboration service.

In this virtual environment, upgrading or moving an application is non-disruptive to the other applications running on the same physical server. Testing and development is streamlined as well. Instead of deploying a physical server, Falk tests new software by installing it in a virtual machine. If he decides not to keep the software, it is a simple matter to roll the virtual machine back to the previous state.

I am very pleased and very comfortable with the level of systems security and uptime.”
- Adam Falk

Robust, Non-disruptive Data Protection

The company’s critical data is now protected with disk-based snapshots, local replication and nightly backups to tape that are stored offsite for disaster recovery – all without slowing or disrupting user applications. The FAS2020 is scheduled to automatically take snapshots of the Windows file share five times per day and keeps 30 days of snapshots online. If a file is accidentally deleted or dragged and dropped into an unknown folder, users can retrieve any previous version right from the Windows interface, thanks to the NetApp integration. Each night Symantec Backup Exec 12.5 backs up the last daily snapshot to tape.

A different backup application called Veeam Backup and Replication protects the virtual machine images. Veeam is the market-leading backup and recovery solution designed specifically for VMware virtual environments. It offers instant recovery of virtual machines and files and recovery of application objects like email. It also verifies the recoverability of every backup image and replicates them locally or to a remote site for disaster recovery.

In this case, Veeam Backup and Replication takes nightly snapshots (changed blocks only) of the virtual machines and stores them on the backup server’s local hard drive. (Backup Exec uses the snapshots as the source for tape backups.) Furthermore, every seven hours Veeam takes snapshots of the images for Exchange, the domain controller and company’s web presence and replicates them to the local drive on a separate blade server. “If something happens to the OS in the virtual machine or if the hardware fails, I can immediately turn on that replica and bring up the mail server, which is our most critical application,” said Falk.

“I am very pleased and very comfortable with the level of systems security and uptime. IT is a service department. I don’t bring in money. I’m an expense area. So my job is to make sure everyone who does bring in money has the tools they need to do their jobs. That means the highest availability and least disruption possible to services,” he added. The upgraded infrastructure has been run smoothly since it was installed two and a half years ago. In fact, Arlie & Company has experienced only a single email outage, which lasted ten hours, in the last seven years – a solid record for a small business with a one-man IT shop.

Room to Grow, Space to Breathe

The virtualized servers and shared, unified storage are utilized at closer to capacity, so the assets are more efficient and “green.” At the same time, there is plenty of headroom to expand when business starts to grow again. The infrastructure is also easier to manage. “The amount of time I spend on IT has decreased to the point that I have actually picked up other duties in the company, because I don’t have to babysit so much,” said Falk.

 Copyright © 2011 Apropos LLC. All rights reserved.

We certainly didn’t have months to get this done. We had to get it up and running within about 30 to 45 days.”
- Greg Anderson, Global IT Manager, PIAB

ERP Systems Do Not Talk

When the Swedish company PIAB decided to implement a global just-in-time inventory model, it had to find a way to integrate its various ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems which were unable to communicate with each other. “We have offices in about 18 different countries, and each of them have individual ERP systems,” said Greg Anderson, Global IT Manager for PIAB. “The biggest issue we had is the amount of double-entry that was required once an order was placed. In the UK, for instance, there was a lot of manual work being done to process an order through the local ERP system and into our main system in Sweden, and also to transfer the information back.” The new model required a more efficient approach to order processing.

Based in Taby, Sweden, PIAB provides industrial vacuum solutions for material handling and factory automation. It serves a variety of industries including food and consumer products, automotive and electronics.

The purpose of the just-in-time inventory model was to streamline PIAB’s supply chain, reduce costs and improve customer service. “We were changing our warehouse model to go from smaller supply at local offices to centralized supply and faster delivery to the customer. So instead of having large bulk orders, we were changing to smaller, direct-ship customer orders,” said Anderson. To handle this larger volume of orders, PIAB needed to automate its order processing more fully.

The different ERP systems in its country offices were the result of organic growth and development. As the company grew and opened offices in new geographies, the local teams put in place business systems to meet their local requirements. Over time this led to a patchwork of ERP systems, many of which could not communicate with each other or with headquarters.

When the directive came down from the company’s board to integrate the ERP systems, the IT department was immediately under time pressure to complete the project. “We certainly didn’t have months to get this done. We had to get it up and running within about 30 to 45 days,” he said.

IBM WebSphere Cast Iron Cloud Integration

PIAB evaluated multiple integration technologies and vendors before choosing IBM WebSphere Cast Iron Cloud integration. It considered EDI (electronic data interchange), but found these solutions were relatively difficult and costly to implement for its environment. Other technologies tended to specialize in a single application or process, such as a technology that integrated very well with Salesforce CRM, but lacked open and flexible connections in other areas. “Cast Iron seemed to have the most connectors. They advertise quite well on their website to show how open the connectivity is. And the biggest thing is, we were under a deadline to put this system in place. Cast Iron had the tagline of ‘integrate in days,’ which was basically how much time I had,” said Anderson.

For the initial phase of the project, PIAB integrated its ERP systems in the UK and France with its headquarters in Sweden. It used an IBM Cast Iron Physical Appliance that performs the translation between the systems. “It is a complicated process that we have – checking stock, classifying orders as to whether they need further handling, how people are notified about what to do, whether an order is valid in a particular location. The appliance handles quite a bit of logic,” said Anderson. “We brought in a technical consultant from Cast Iron to work with us here. We wrote the integration project in about two weeks. There was a little delay when one of the local developers was writing the web services interface at the end point level. But everything went really well. The surprising part was how well it worked and how well it has run since then, considering how fast we had to implement it.”

ROI in Nine Months

Anderson is pleased with the outcome: “We saw a nine-month ROI on this particular project.” Cost savings came from fewer hours spent entering data, less inventory in the supply chain and reduced local warehousing and office space. Customers benefit from faster delivery. The speed of implementation was especially important in this case. “It could easily have taken nine months to a year to try to program something internally, which would have slowed down our process of adopting this model.”

“I’m confident of how reliable Cast Iron is. I don’t have to worry about it failing, which is good because I don’t want to get a call at three in the morning, waking me up in the middle of the night because things are not working in Europe.”

Since the initial project, PIAB has rolled out additional integrations with WebSphere Cast Iron Cloud integration, such as connecting Salesforce CRM with the ERP system for its office in Germany. Now sales personnel can see all of a customer’s history and detail within a single tool. These follow-on projects have an even faster ROI because the integration appliance is already in place and PIAB has gained skills in creating integrations using Cast Iron.

“So we have continued to see benefit from Cast Iron, even more than our ERP systems. I’m really happy with the choice we made,” said Anderson.

 Copyright © 2011 Apropos LLC. All rights reserved.

I wanted to simplify the sheer number of points of contact and make it easier to communicate.“
- Jared Grigg, Director of Communication and Information, Grigg Brothers

Toward a Streamlined Phone System

Grigg Brothers wanted to streamline and consolidate its corporate phone system. Its existing system was an assortment of phone lines and services for its headquarters and operational office in southern Idaho and seven branch offices around the U.S. Each office in Idaho supported several employees. Most of the branch offices where field technical reps were based had two phone lines – one for voice and another for fax – plus an Internet connection and mobile phone. “Communications and technology can be a big line item on the budget,” said Jared Grigg, Director of Communication and Information. “The reps were turning in expense reports with fax numbers and landlines and mobile lines, and I said, this is too much. This can be considerably more condensed. I wanted to simplify the sheer number of points of contact and make it easier to communicate.”

Grigg Brothers is a manufacturer and wholesaler of specialty fertilizers for the turf grass industry, including golf courses and sports fields. The company’s flagship products are liquid foliar fertilizers that are absorbed through the leaf tissue of a plant instead of through the roots. Nutrients applied in this way are almost fully absorbed, even during stressful times like summer heat, and create healthier turf. Grigg Brothers’ foliar fertilizers are also more environmentally friendly because they avoid toxic soil buildup, leaching and runoff.

In 2005, when Jared Grigg first started considering options for a new phone system, the owners of the company expressed skepticism about voice over IP (VOIP). They wondered whether it was mature and robust enough to support a business. Because of this and his prior experience managing a Nortel Meridian phone system, Grigg decided to focus more intently on traditional key telephone systems. He dialogued extensively with a local reseller, received several proposals and even proposed a system to the board of directors. The system offered greater flexibility and better features, but ultimately the directors turned it down because the cost was higher than what they were already paying and exceeded the technology budget.

Meanwhile VOIP technology was improving and gaining acceptance in the market. “I decided to look at the cloud again because more and more solutions were becoming available,” he said.

His first step was to deploy an Internet fax service. This service automatically converted incoming faxes to PDF format and sent them by email to the recipients. Everyone in the company received a new fax number. Technical reps who spent much of their time traveling could receive faxes immediately on their PC instead of waiting until they came back to the office. Outgoing faxes could be scanned in to a PC and emailed to the fax service for delivery. The electronic fax service cost considerably less than the dedicated fax lines it replaced.

A Serendipitous Opportunity

In 2007, ATC Communications, the Internet and phone service provider for Grigg Brothers headquarters, acquired a VOIP solution provider called Nextphone. Here Grigg saw an opportunity. One of his concerns with a VOIP solution was that if a problem arose, the VOIP provider might blame the Internet service provider and vice-versa, leaving the user caught in the middle. “If I went down this road, if I backed ATC with their new acquisition, then they would be responsible regardless of whether it was a phone problem or an Internet connectivity problem,” he said.

The ATC Nextphone service had the features they were looking for:

• Hosted IP phone service that all offices around the U.S. could access over an Internet connection
• Programmable “find me, follow me” feature for incoming calls that can, for instance, simultaneously ring a desk phone and cell phone, or one then the other, before going to voice mail
• Four-digit dial connecting everyone in their geographically distributed organization as if they were in the same building
• Internet fax service with solid features and technical support
• Unified messaging that sends voice mails and faxes to a user’s email inbox
• Conferencing capabilities so Grigg Brothers can set up and control its own conference calls
• Web portal for centralized programming and administration
• Automatic call routing to cell phones in case of local power outage
• Significantly lower cost than their existing phone system

This set of capabilities combined with Grigg Brothers’ established relationship with ATC made it attractive. “It was the perfect solution,” said Grigg. The company deployed Nextphone across all its locations. Branch offices received Linksys PAP2T Internet Phone Adapters. To access the new phone service, they only needed to connect the adapter to the Internet and plug in any standard telephone handset. If a technical rep preferred to rely exclusively on a cell phone, the system could be programmed to route all incoming calls there. The company also standardized on Google Apps Premier, so users can access email, voice mail and faxes anywhere using a Web browser.

Headquarters initially experienced intermittent call quality problems, much to Grigg’s chagrin, though his strategy of using the same VOIP and Internet service provider proved advantageous. Grigg was concerned that VOIP would get a black eye because the owners were already apprehensive. But he believed the hosted service was solid and worked with ATC to address the underlying network quality issue. While on the verge of deploying a second DSL at headquarters and a dedicated switch for the phone system, ATC offered to try boosting the bandwidth of the existing Internet connection. “It automatically improved. I have not had a single problem since the day they did that,” he said.

In my twenty plus years of doing this, I have never been more synchronized across all platforms.”
- Jared Grigg

Less Costly and Easier to Support

As a result of switching to VOIP, overall communication costs fell by more than 40% in the first 12 months and have remained level. At the same time, the company streamlined the number of phone lines and points of contact and improved its ability to communicate and collaborate.

Grigg is also pleased that he spends much less time supporting this new phone system. He uses the Nextphone web portal to handle routine administration and support requests. In fact, the company’s entire IT infrastructure is set up for centralized, remote administration. “In my office I have several computers and monitors in a semicircle around me, and I am remotely connected to every single asset in the company – all desktop computers, all laptops and even some cell phones as we move to smarter phones. In my twenty plus years of doing this, I have never been more synchronized across all platforms,” he said.

Soft Phones for International Roaming

More recently the company started using soft phones for placing calls when outside the U.S. to expensive international roaming charges. Soft phone software runs on PCs and smart phones such as iPhone and Android. It lets users place phone calls through that device over the Internet as if they were at their office desk. It is another way Grigg Brothers is using VOIP to keep down communication costs.

 Copyright © 2011 Apropos LLC. All rights reserved.

If you have all this data, you have to mine it. You have to be able to make decisions from it.“
- Eric Kellerer, Executive Director of IT, Northwest Nazarene University

Data Mining for Better Decision Making

The greatest value of a consolidated ERP system, according to Eric Kellerer, Executive Director of Information Technology at Northwest Nazarene University, is actively using that information to improve the organization. “It is so important. If you have all this data, you have to mine it. You have to be able to make decisions from it – daily decisions and strategic decisions,” he said.

Northwest Nazarene University (NNU) is a Christian liberal arts university located in Nampa, Idaho, and with satellite campuses in Boise, Twin Falls and Idaho Falls. NNU offers 45 undergraduate majors, 11 graduate programs and numerous continuing education credits. Its enrollment includes about 2,000 graduate and undergraduate students as well as between 8,000 and 9,000 continuing education students who take classes to maintain professional certifications in education, social work, counseling and other professions.

Ten years ago, NNU consolidated all of its campus databases into a single ERP system from Jenzabar. The new system provided a centralized view and “single version of the truth” for admissions/recruiting, registration, finance, alumni relations and donor relations. For reporting and data analysis, they used a business intelligence software package from Cognos. Recently they reached a point where the Cognos software needed to be upgraded to a new version. It was going to be an expensive and time-consuming conversion, so the university decided to step back and consider other options.

Switch to Evisions

It was at this point they discovered Evisions Argos, a web-based enterprise reporting solution, and Evisions FormFusion, a solution for document enhancement and delivery. “Evisions literally installed on our whole campus in a little over an hour. They told me it would be simple, and I didn’t believe it until I saw it. We have been slowly moving our reports over to that platform. It has gone really well,” said Kellerer.

The Argos report writing and data analysis software is specifically designed for institutions of higher education. Users access it over a secure web interface, so there is no need to install it on individual PCs. The software supports any number of database types and connections. Argos features include dashboards for graphically displaying information trends and summaries, automated report scheduling and delivery, and OLAP (online analytical processing) cubes for analyzing data in multiple (3+) dimensions to spot trends and relationships.

True Collaboration

After NNU installed the software, Evisions offered to send consultants to visit the campus and help Kellerer and his staff get up and running with the software. “My first response was, how much is that going to cost? These kinds of consultants don’t come cheap!” But Evisions partnered with NNU to make sure cost was not an issue. Three of their consultants spent a few days at the university creating reports and helping IT staff learn how to use the software.

I can think of only two companies in my twelve years as IT director that actually have acted like a partner, and Evisions is one of them.“
- Eric Kellerer

After completing the reports, the consultants uploaded them to the Evisions Co-op User Community. This is a common repository for report sharing that all Evisions customers can access and utilize. “If I need to build a sophisticated report on alumni relations, before I go to all the trouble, I look and see if some other university has already built it. We all have permission to go to this Co-op, download it and use it as we wish,” said Kellerer.

“The whole idea of collaborating together is important in universities, but there aren’t many companies that make it easy to do. I can think of only two companies in my twelve years as IT director that actually have acted like a partner, and Evisions is one of them. I think their concept is, if they can make us successful, if they can get us excited about the product and using it as it should be used, then we are going to upload to this Co-op and all their customers are going to be happier.”

Keen Insight

NNU leverages other features of the Argos software. They use report scheduling and delivery to help keep budget officers on track while reducing work for the IT department. IT staff no longer have to periodically generate budget reports and mail them to the other departments, since Argos does this automatically each week.

Users can analyze data themselves with graphical interfaces and drag-and-drop data manipulation. Argos is able to create data packs, or subsets of the ERP database with all data relationships intact, for individual users. Therefore users can access information pertinent to their jobs, sort and filter data and run reports as they wish.

In particular, OLAP cubes have proven to be a power analytical tool for the university. “It allows you to view three-dimensional data from many different perspectives until you begin to see patterns that you can make better decisions from,” said Kellerer. For instance, NNU looked closely at donor demographics and the effectiveness of various types of fundraising events. They were able to discern which event types were most effective in each geographical area. Now they focus fundraising efforts on the events in which donors are most interested and those that yield the greatest return.

In another example, NNU analyzed five years worth of scholarship data to predict scholarship acceptance rates based on factors like the amount of money offered and academic major. “We know if we give someone eleven thousand dollars a semester, the likelihood of them coming to NNU is extremely high because it is a full-ride scholarship. On the other hand, if we give a person one thousand dollars, we can know that a certain percentage of people are not going to come. That allows us to offer a certain percent over what we have because we know who will come and who will not, at least by percentage. And then it allows to start helping people earlier and not waiting until the last minute when someone cancels,” he said.

Streamlined Processes

Argos and FormFusion have helped streamline other university processes as well. Printing transcripts used to be a time-consuming and fairly costly job because it required careful programming and the paper had to be pre-printed with watermarks and then run through again to print data for each student. With Argos in conjunction with FormFusion, they now use standard reports that deliver a more professional look and include watermarks in a single printing.

The software has simplified the process for keeping track of communication and correspondence with students. When sending out letters where a response is expected, a special code has to be entered into the ERP database. Argos allows users to run a query, print letters and update the database in a single keystroke.

More to Come

Remarkably NNU has implemented these improvements in only four months since installing Argos and FormFusion. It makes one wonder what they will be able to do over the next four years.

 Copyright © 2010 Apropos LLC. All rights reserved.

You can actually resume the business knowing that the data is accurate and it is functional the way it was prior to the event.“
- Richard Dolewski, CTO and VP of Business Continuity Services, WTS

A Service Apart

How does a managed services provider set itself apart? For WTS, which has data centers in Seattle, WA, and Denver, CO, the answer is providing its clients a special competency in disaster recovery and business continuity. “WTS does the recovery on behalf of their customers, therefore relieving the customers of this burden, especially at a time when their staff may not be available,” said Richard Dolewski, Chief Technology Officer and VP of Business Continuity Services. “WTS delivers a repeatable recovery result every time. We value the cost of any business outage and utilize High Availability software to further eliminate planned outages.”

WTS is a managed services provider that emphasizes application hosting for Oracle JD Edwards software, though it provides other services such as disaster recovery and colocation services for iSeries (also known as IBM i, System i or AS/400), Windows and Linux platforms.

Dolewski continued, “A well planned deployment of infrastructure technology with clearly defined availability and recovery objectives can help ensure hardware failures and more serious disasters do not bring a business to its knees. A truly highly available infrastructure can be a revenue engine for our customers by always keeping the systems available to support their business requirements.”

“So we are shifting from traditional HA – which is passive, it’s after a bad event – to business continuity, which means keeping systems always available for our clients. With the clients that we service, it is all about eliminating their planned and unplanned outages. Now they see a value. They’re actually saying, wow, my systems are available so much more.”

Tape Is Not Enough

Prior to employing solutions from WTS, many clients used only tape backup systems to protect their data. When a disaster or system failure occurred, it typically took 24 or 48 hours to find the tapes, load data and restart the system. The data on the restored system was already a day behind because the last backup ran the night before. Therefore a tape-only approach meant a day or two of downtime plus losing a day’s worth of transactions and file updates. For many businesses, such recovery times and recovery points are no longer acceptable.

In one example, a transportation company with four or five distribution centers suffered an outage and had to recover from tape. The information in the recovered system was a day out of date and no longer represented the inventory status in their distribution network. So they did not know if a product had been shipped or billed and were forced to do an inventory recount. It was enough for them to realize tape is not enough.

A View to a Recovery

WTS uses proven, off-the-shelf replication technologies and a good high availability monitoring system to deliver recovery times of an hour or less and a recovery point of the last successful transaction. In the event of a disaster the actual recovery is performed by WTS staff. “We provide application recovery, which is business continuity. We have unbelievable JD Edwards staff here as well as engineers on the different platforms, so the application will be functional. If you have a disaster, you are in a crisis. Turning over a system that is, shall we say, less than credible, you have a second disaster waiting for you. So you want this to be application ready. You can actually resume the business knowing that the data is accurate and it is functional the way it was prior to the event,” he said.

WTS employs replication technologies from Vision Solutions, which includes the recent acquisition of Double-Take Software. Before deploying a technology in its data centers, WTS goes through a detailed proof of concept to make sure it meets all technical criteria. It selected iTERA and Mimix for iSeries platforms and Double-Take for Windows and Linux platforms. It considers them best-of-breed host-based solutions for replicating data in real time to a remote site, whether between WTS data centers or from client sites to WTS if they just need a recovery site. They support multiple operating systems in physical and virtual server environments.

Looking forward, WTS will continue to evolve its disaster recovery services. As a managed services provider, it views these stringent, application-level DR capabilities as a differentiator. “It is all about being prepared. Our job is to be prepared for the client,” said Dolewski.

 Copyright © 2010 Apropos LLC. All rights reserved.

 Copyright © 2010 Apropos LLC. All rights reserved.