Central Michigan Community Hospital

Success Story

Central Michigan Hospital moves from Microsoft Windows NT to Novell NetWare and GroupWise, dramatically increasing uptime from 90 to 99.999%

Overview

Central Michigan Community Hospital is a wholly owned, not-for-profit hospital with approximately $58 million in revenues and 700 employees. The hospital works with more than 75 doctors in a variety of specialties.

Challenge

A stable, reliable network is critical to a hospital providing patient care 24 hours a day. With its Microsoft Windows NT platform, Central Michigan Community Hospital experienced significant network downtime, typically costing the organization up to $250,000 a day. In addition, a recent virus attack to its Microsoft Mail system nearly paralyzed the organization for almost two weeks. The IT staff was continually installing operating system patches in its efforts to improve performance.

Central Michigan Community Hospital needed a new solution to provide the stability and security required to support its life-critical work and ease its IT burden. The hospital also needed a desktop management solution to standardize its desktops and rescue technicians who were spending hours troubleshooting problems for users with varying PC configurations.

Novell solution

"I've worked for several healthcare organizations during the past 15 years, and I'm a firm believer that Novell simplifies virtually every aspect of managing a network. With Microsoft, the performance just isn't there and we got tired of their 'patch of the week.' There is no way to efficiently manage a network of any size without Novell at the heart of it."

Gil Lalo
CIO,
Central Michigan Community Hospital

Central Michigan Community Hospital chose to replace its Window NT system with Novell NetWare 6 to provide a more robust and reliable network for its 700 employees. After evaluating alternative e-mail and calendaring applications, including Microsoft Exchange, the organization chose Novell GroupWise 6 to reduce administrative overhead and protect its environment against virus attacks.

"I've worked for several healthcare organizations during the past 15 years, and I'm a firm believer that Novell simplifies virtually every aspect of managing a network," said Gil Lalo, CIO of Central Michigan Community Hospital. "With Microsoft, the performance just isn't there and we got tired of their 'patch of the week.' There is no way to efficiently manage a network of any size without Novell at the heart of it."

NetWare 6 immediately restored stability to the hospital's network and increased its uptime from 90 to 99.999%. With Novell eDirectory as the authentication server, the hospital can also easily manage users and groups.

"As a hospital, we need to concentrate on patient care, not on how to keep our network from going down," said Lalo. "With NetWare, we have dramatically improved the working environment at the hospital. The IT staff can now walk the halls without having to avoid frustrated users."

With Microsoft Mail, the hospital had trouble with large-scale user administration, frequent downtime, and a need to continually tweak the system to improve performance. Novell GroupWise, which ties into eDirectory, simplifies user administration, and offers superior protection against virus attacks and subsequent downtime.

The group calendaring functionality in GroupWise is already promoting a culture change in the organization. Users are more diligent about keeping their calendars up to date, which makes it easier to schedule meetings and also helps users be more efficient with their time.

ZENworks for Desktops has significantly decreased the amount of time the IT staff spends managing desktops. What used to be an all-day job to set up a new PC is now a 15-minute project. Using policy management in ZENworks, the IT staff has standardized 100% of its desktops, eliminating hours of troubleshooting for users who have changed their configurations. In return, users no longer wait weeks for service.

ZENworks for Servers allows the hospital to stay on top of its growth needs by managing its utilization and proactively adding capacity.

Looking ahead, the hospital plans to integrate many of its clinical applications into eDirectory to create a single sign-on for users. The security and authentication of a single user database will help hospital staff better comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirements.

Results

With a reliable network, secure e-mail, and simplified desktop management, Central Michigan Community Hospital has removed technology as a barrier to providing quality patient care. With 99.999% network uptime, the hospital doctors and staff have renewed confidence in their systems and are more productive. By using ZENworks for Desktops, the IT staff has dramatically decreased administrative time and costs by standardizing 100% of its desktops and reducing the amount of time to set up a new PC to minutes, instead of hours.

"Our entire Novell solution makes it easy to administer users and groups, provide security, and distribute applications," said Lalo. "One administrator now oversees our entire network, including GroupWise, on a main campus and five remote sites and he is not feeling overworked. In fact, we are trying to find new things for him to do."