Reference story - Parnassia Bavo Group

The Challenge

Mid 2007 the infrastructure at Parnassia Bavo Group had expanded - as a result of growth and mergers - and consisted of one central location with servers and terminal servers, numerous smaller offi ces with a local Novell file server and GroupWise environment and offi ces with only thin clients. “This environment had become too difficult to manage and control,” said Adrie Rolloos, Information Advisor at the Service Centrum from Parnassia Bavo Groep.

“The coverage area of 170 locations was simply too large to be able to administer it in an effi cient way. In addition, license management in this environment was a difficult and time consuming process and we required more insight into the use of applications.” Parnassia needed an IT environment that better suited the healthcare organization, which provides services 24x7. A high available wellmanaged IT infrastructure was impossible to realize with decentralized systems and administration.

The Solution

When defining the business case for the new IT architecture before and during the merger, the organization decided to completely centralize IT and phase out Novell and GroupWise at the remote locations. “The 4-Layer Model presented by Cam IT Solutions bv, a RES Software System Integrator, was a perfect match with our ideas,” added Rolloos. “Together with Cam IT Solutions, we defined the technical design of the new network based on this model.
We selected a SAN solution, server blades, a virtual machine solution and decided to add Citrix Presentation Server, RES PowerFuse and RES Wisdom to our terminal servers. These combined technologies would offer improved manageability and enabled us to build a scalable and redundant environment.”

Parnassia Bavo Group now has centralized IT in two redundant datacenters. Almost 100 HP blade servers run Citrix Presentation Server with RES PowerFuse for user workspace management and RES Wisdom for IT change automation. The backoffice runs on 16 virtualized servers and an EMC SAN provides storage capacity. Almost all medical personnel, physicians and other employees use ChipPC Xtreme thin clients or PCs configured as thin client with RES PowerFuse Workspace Extender™ (a component of RES PowerFuse), and are also able to work from home.

Main benefits:

• Increased efficiency of IT administration
• Saved costs by enabling easy re-use of application licenses
• Simplified application request process by delegating control to local management
• Supported security and privacy within the NEN 7510 framework
• Extended the lifetime of existing PCs
  

The Benefits

The NEN 7510 standard describes a framework for patient information, as security and privacy is very important in healthcare environments. “We used the NEN 7510 standard during the implementation of our new network environment. RES PowerFuse has become part of the numerous countermeasures we have taken to create a secure environment for accessing patient data,” continued Rolloos. “We use RES PowerFuse for example to restrict the use of USB drives.” The desktop lockdown enabled by RES PowerFuse, assures employees at the organization to have an identical and secure workspace on their thin clients, both when in the offi ce as well as when working from home. Working from home is now a standard feature that all employees can request when they need it. The AppGuard™ feature of RES PowerFuse ensures that employees cannot install unauthorized applications.

RES PowerFuse also helps Parnassia in managing the usage and licensing of applications. Previously, the organization had no idea who used the installed applications. Rolloos: “Now, with RES PowerFuse, we have detailed information about which employees actively use the installed application and we are able to consolidate older applications. In addition, the process of re-deploying applications – if allowed within the license agreements of the application – is very easy. “

“In the near future, we will use the RES PowerFuse reports to pass on the costs of application licenses directly to the user, and replace the current model which is global and based on the installed base. Usage of expensive applications can then be paid by the actual department. The easy to use interface and delegation function in RES PowerFuse enables us to combine the authorization for an application and enabling it to the end-user as role for the department manager responsible for an application. This is more efficient and will improve the response time for providing access to the application.“

Part of the business case was to extend the lifespan of PCs with at least one year. PCs are configured as thin client using the RES PowerFuse Workspace Extender, a component of RES PowerFuse. During the next five years, or at the time they break, Parnassia will replace them by a dedicated ChipPC Xtreme thin client.

The organization uses RES Wisdom for installing new servers or re-provision existing servers within their large Citrix Presentation Server environment. “This is a very easy process: plugging in the server to the network outlet, hitting a function key on the console and the server including all applications that run on it, is available to the users,” Rolloos concluded.

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