Business Need: Beatitudes is a care retirement community. It is a not-for-profit ministry of the Church of the Beatitudes. The campus facility includes senior living apartments, restaurants, a library, a gift shop, a bank, a salon, pool, and other community facilities/activities.
Technical Environment:
20 server instances running mostly Server 2003 and a couple running server 2000. 1 Server running Server 2008 standard with Exchange 2007.
120 Workstations spanning across several departments all with different line of business applications.
Cisco switching environment to cover internal infrastructure and client systems (which number in the hundreds.
Pains for the Client:
1. Need for server consolidation:
a. They had several of their 20 servers with only 3 to 5 users, but the vendors for the line of business applications insisted on dedicated servers.
2. Lack of sophistication and knowledge in current staff.
a. Current IT staff was too busy putting out fires
b. No training plan to update skills
c. Too few of staff to span the areas of expertise needed
d. No coverage during vacation or sick days
e. Existing staff had interpersonal issues
3. Sparse systems documentation and no written processes.
a. A few incomplete files described some parts, most information was out of date.
b. All methodologies for systems work was carried in the mind of the current staff.
c. No best practices systems were implemented.
4. Backup systems had been ignored and never really addressed overall
a. Due to technical challenges and incompetence of administration staff, the backup was never completely setup.
b. Backup/Restore testing had never been performed.
5. Monitoring or Alerting
a. Cisco systems were being monitored by a 3rd party provider costing $700 per month. No remediation was included in the monitoring.
b. Server and desktop monitoring was completely non-existent. The only way technicians knew about a problem was from the end-user requesting assistance.
6. Asset Management Problems:
a. A large spreadsheet was kept with one big list attempting to carry information about every asset. It was very outdated, it had an undocumented color coding system that was not understood by current staff, and it had very little useful information about the assets.
7. No comprehensive Vendor Management
a. No documented method to contact vendors and no documentation of contracts was easily available.
Solutions Provided:
1. Changed staffing levels for IT from 2 to 1.
Kept the desktop technician/First responder onsite.
2. Utilized CCNS Staff as outsource provider for all server and Cisco management.
3. Utilized CCNS Staff as escalation team for existing technician
4. Implemented the CCNS monitoring and alerting tools which have comprehensive abilities.
5. CCNS at the beginning of service did a server consolidation project
6. Had Vacation/Sick time coverage
7. Gained the expertise of a team of highly qualified Systems engineers who receive regular training on the latest and most advance technology.
8. CCNS provided a proven asset management system with automation in data collection and sophisticated reporting capabilities.
9. CCNS took over, documented and managed the vendor relationships
10. CCNS processes began to be utilized for all systems work.
11. CCNS took over patch management of all systems and utilized sophisticated automation tools to do this more efficiently and consistently.
12. CCNS took over the management/monitoring of Cisco systems and allowed them to reduce that expense as it was included in the agreement.
13. CCNS immediately revamped the entire server backup solution, shored it up and put it on a regular testing schedule.
14. CCNS consolidated servers into a virtual environment improving uptime, power consumption, and disaster recovery capabilities.
15. CCNS utilized an advanced ticketing system for accountability, scheduling, project management, and service delivery reporting.
16. CCNS surveyed the customer twice a month for customer satisfaction levels.
17. CCNS held strategy meetings with executive staff to expertly inform their information systems strategy.
CCNS was able to analyze the current systems and see that they could manage the IT systems for the same cost as the employee who was let go. So essentially, the customer received a huge improvement in service, coverage, expertise, monitoring, documentation, vendor management, and service reporting for the same cost as the employee who was incompetent and had interpersonal issues with other staff.
Beatitudes had received outsourcing quotes from other vendors that charged the same amounts as CCNS but wanted beatitudes to keep all existing staff.
What Keith the IT director liked the most about the CCNS offer is that they kept the cost inline with his budget while increasing the service substantially. Additionally, he really like that the agreement was a fixed cost agreement so he could rely on what the cost would be from month to month.
“Something from Beatitudes Care Center..” 