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Unleashing IT Seize innovation, accelerate business, drive outcomes.All through the cloud.

• Achieving innovation in the cloud

• Experts speak out on mission-critical virtualization

Spring 2012

Betting on a Game ChangerCIO Bob Rudy and Senior Director of Global IT Shreyas Shah reveal the ‘winning hand’ behind Avago Technologies’ Oracle migration. 2

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Perspectives and Solutions

04 A shared vision on why infrastructure matters How Cisco and Intel are working together to create customer value.

05 Journey to the center of the cloud An honest assessment of the benefits—and remaining risks of virtualizing mission-critical applications.

06 On trend: Lawyers and mobility One technology leader’s journey to enable secure mobile work.

Industry Roundtable

09 Mission-critical application virtualization Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, VMware, Citrix and Cisco discuss the risk/reward factors of enterprise virtualization and the cloud.

Experiences

12 Technology refresh changes the game at Avago Technologies Move to Cisco UCS™ lowers operational costs by 40 percent.

15 IT as a rapid responder for business growth Renewed agility positions IT to support strategic growth at KEMET.

16 Leaders of the (virtualization) pack A look at one of the healthcare industry’s most advanced private clouds.

18 Taking a product to new markets Cloud computing gives iSentry the best of two worlds: flexibility and management.

20 Energizing the speed of operations Virtualization strategy improves drilling efficiency at Southwestern Energy.

22 Soaring above the ‘cloud’ at Sparrow Health System Mid-Michigan healthcare provider aims to transform patient care with IT.

Cover Bob Rudy (left), Shreyas Shah, Avago Technologies

Unleashing IT Seize innovation, accelerate business, drive outcomes.All through the cloud.

Spring 2012

It’s all about the data center

But not just any data center. And certainly not the old models with capacity-guzzling, antiquated technology that drain IT of time, resources, and dollars. It’s about the new data center. The visionary data center. The Unified Data Center.

The Unified Data Center enables agility, integration, simplicity, and cost reduction. It’s a data center that’s built on collaborative innovation. Cisco and Intel® have come together, taking the capabilities of the latest Intel® Xeon® processor product family and integrating those into the most recent release of the Cisco® Unified Computing System™ (UCS).

With this combined innovation, the Unified Data Center isn’t merely a vision. It’s a reality for many organizations, some of which are profiled in this edition of Unleashing IT. On page 5, you’ll read about how Cisco realized rewards and overcame pitfalls in its own migration to a virtual, cloud-based environment.

Avago Technologies (page 12) also pursued a migration of its entire Oracle application stack and reduced IT costs from 6.8 to 1.17 percent of total revenue. And Seattle Children’s Hospital (page 16) is also innovating by virtualizing infrastructure, mission-critical applications, and desktops to enable the business without sacrificing security and control.

The opportunities for agility, integration, simplicity, and savings reside in the Unified Data Center. It’s the complete solution–computing, networking, security, virtualization, and management–that both supports and enables the heterogeneous environments characterizing enterprise IT today. Make now the time to harness the power of unification and unleash IT.

For more information, follow the links inside or contact Cisco at 1-800-553-6387 and select option 1 to speak with a Cisco representative. We welcome your feedback on the articles in this publication at www.UnleashingIT.com

Sincerely,

Giuliano Di Vitantonio VP Global Data Center & Virtualization Marketing Cisco Systems, Inc.

Boyd Davis VP & GM Datacenter Infrastructure Group Intel Corporation

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Business aspirations drive every new era in technology innovation. Today, the concepts of speed, agility, velocity, ramp, and response permeate every executive conversation. And the data center is at the core of how to make those concepts business reality. However, the actuality of the data center—overhead from aging, unwieldy, legacy technologies, and the need to be fast and flexible, are creating growing IT frustration.

It is precisely in times like these when real vision drives evolution. For Cisco, that vision is the Unified Data Center, which combines Cisco® Unified Computing, Cisco Unified Fabric, and Cisco Unified Management. “The way that you design the underlying infrastructure is critical to the economics of the data center,” says Giuliano Di Vitantonio, VP Global Data Center and Virtualization Marketing, Cisco. “Design determines the amount of human intervention and software required, which are the factors that drive complexity and cost, and affect true agility.”

What makes Cisco different? Plainly, infrastructure matters. And Cisco designed its Unified Computing System infrastructure from the ground up to deliver IT as a service, incorporating manageability, automation, and security at the outset to support a combination of physical, virtual, and cloud environments.

Cisco’s relationship with Intel® fortifies its data center vision and augments its ability to deliver. Intel’s focus is on enabling flexibility to support changing workloads and shifting application demands. “At Intel, we invest in performance, energy efficiency, security, and advanced I/O capabilities to keep our technology moving forward,” says Boyd Davis, VP and General Manager of the Datacenter Infrastructure Group at Intel, elaborating on the approach. “Cisco takes our capabilities and layers on its innovation, engineering excellence, and solution expertise to create customer value.”

The new Cisco Unified Computing System™ B200 M3 Blade Server with Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2600 is a prime example of how innovations by Cisco and Intel combine to address customer demands. Compared to the prior generation processor, the E5 family delivers up to 80 percent performance improvement, up to 50 percent greater energy efficiency, and two times the I/O

bandwidth. The Cisco Virtual Interface Card (VIC) 1240 takes advantage of the performance capabilities from Intel, offering versatility and density for a wide range of workloads without compromise.

“Our shared belief that infrastructure matters differentiates Cisco and Intel from our competitors,” adds Di Vitantonio. “They are building expensive layers of management software on top of legacy infrastructure, while we maintain a firm commitment to the underlying computing architecture. Together we will continue to deliver the infrastructure innovations that will drive the Unified Data Center vision—business agility, unified technologies, operational simplicity, and reduced costs.”

More information

Visit: www.UnleashingIT.com/video for a video on how innovations by Cisco and Intel combine to address customer demands. To speak with a Cisco representative call 1-800-553-6387 and select option 1.

A shared vision on why infrastructure matters


In a time where business agility, operational simplicity, and financial efficiency are critical requirements for the data center, Cisco and Intel believe that infrastructure matters.

Intel’s Davis (left) and Cisco’s Di Vitantonio examine a wafer containing the latest Intel Xeon processor that is enabling IT to meet unprecedented growth in the number of users, devices and applications

http://www.UnleashingIT.com/video

5Seize innovation, accelerate business, drive outcomes. All through the Cloud.

Journey to the center of the cloudAn honest assessment of the benefits—and remaining risks—of virtualizing mission-critical applications and making a global transition to the cloud.


Cisco has been immersed in virtualization and cloud computing for quite some time. Not only in the development of enabling products and solutions, but also in the company’s own transition to and use of virtualization and cloud technologies.

“We are about 80 percent virtualized at this point,” says Sean Worthington, Vice President, IT Operational Excellence and Service Enablement, Cisco. “And we have a robust private cloud, known as CITEIS (Cisco IT Elastic Infrastructure Services).”

With more than 15,000 Intel®-powered virtual machines (VMs) and roughly 1350 applications supporting 72,000 employees around the world, Cisco has learned a great deal about the rewards and pitfalls of an enterprise migration to a virtual, cloud-based environment.

“In our experience, the benefits of virtualization are self-evident: more business agility, better economics of IT assets, faster provisioning, and improved standardization,” explains Worthington. “But the industry is still figuring out how to support and license these newer computing models.”

This is especially true for mission-critical applications, he adds. Vendor support and licensing contracts are variables that can offset the benefits of virtualization and cloud migration.

“You might not want to virtualize a mission-critical application based on the parameters of a support contract. And if you don’t have a supported configuration, you could be left on your own if there’s a problem,” says Worthington. “Legal terms and licensing are also evolving. Are you paying by core? By VM? By blade? This can greatly impact the cost/benefit of a transition.”

Once these questions are answered, organizations must figure out how to implement, maintain, and maximize their virtual environment. According to Worthington, two of the main

benefits of cloud computing—fluidity and flexibility—can actually be a hindrance if they are not anticipated or managed correctly.

“When applications, VMs, and middleware components float in a cloud, you can lose track of them,” he explains. “This is fine when things are working, but can delay problem resolution if something breaks. Latency can also be an issue when VMs are physically far apart. Fluidity puts more stress on systems and applications management, especially when high performance is needed.”

Cisco has deployed additional monitoring and configuration management capabilities to overcome these hurdles. And while the company’s IT team can provision a new VM in six minutes flat, the VM is rarely repositioned in CITEIS.

“The value of virtualization and cloud models is real, and our transition has been a very, very positive one,” says Worthington. “But you need to think holistically, carefully evaluating the risks along with the benefits. Experience and confidence are critical success factors, so start with the areas of least concern, learn from them, and then work up to mission-critical systems.”

For more perspectives, insights, and advice about virtualizing and cloud-enabling mission-critical applications, see the wide-ranging industry roundtable on page 9.

More information

For more information on the Cisco CloudVerse® framework for cloud delivery and the products that enable Cisco CITEIS, contact your Cisco Account Representative or Channel Partner, call Cisco at 1-800-553-6387 and select option 1, or visit: www.UnleashingIT.com

Left unmanaged, fluidity and flexibility can be a hindrance: Cisco’s Sean Worthington


Unleashing IT6


One of the first to roll out iPads securely for business use. One of the first to run Citrix on the iPad. One of the first to run Windows 7 and Office 2010. Think those are the initiatives of a cutting-edge technology company or an in-your-face startup? Nope. It’s Stikeman Elliott LLP, one of Canada’s leading law firms, with 500 lawyers and 1300 staff. And it’s Venky Srinivasan’s, the firm’s Toronto-based Director of Technology, and his Montreal colleague Robert Gauthier’s way of responding to trends exerting their influence in the legal space.

“Mobility is a huge trend affecting law firms, and it’s our responsibility to enable our lawyers to serve our clients more effectively,”

says Srinivasan. “IT must provide the tools that drive efficiency and allow lawyers to move around, work wherever, but access the same resources securely. A scalable, secure platform that enables growth is at the heart of those capabilities.”

Evaluating strategic directions

But how to get there? Stikeman Elliott was a Nortel shop. It ran Nortel’s phone system and network switches. Virtualization didn’t exist. Servers were 100 percent physical. And BlackBerry was the only supported mobile device.

Within that environment, the firm began to ask some tough questions. Where

One IT director’s journey in transforming his law firm into a progressive technology leader that is enabling secure mobile work.

On trend: Lawyers and mobility

Stikeman Elliott’s Srinivasan discusses the firm’s mobile strategy with partner Brian Pukier


should it take IT? How should IT support the business? Enhanced mobility was an obvious requirement. And convenience and security were high priorities. As a result, the firm made a strategic decision to migrate the entire infrastructure to Cisco. At the outset, the migration encompassed switches in eight offices worldwide, new firewalls, and Cisco® VoIP solutions.

“As we were contemplating strategy, enablement was top of mind for us every step of the way,” says Srinivasan. “We chose VoIP for single number reach and inter-office, five-digit dialing—enabling more mobility and cost savings from reduced long distance calling. We also started considering encryption and management solutions to leverage the Apple platform for business because lawyers wanted to use iPads and iPhones. Basically, in two years, we transformed our entire platform to enable the capabilities and devices that our lawyers wanted to use.”

Currently, Stikeman Elliott’s IT team supports close to 150 iPads and is testing iPhones with mobile management and security solutions.

A long-term vision

The firm’s vision is clear and defined. It wants to consolidate all eight offices on one platform, putting Stikeman Elliott in a position to outsource infrastructure management when the time is right. The Cisco Unified Computing System™ (UCS), powered by Intel® Xeon® processors, is the most viable option based on those requirements.

In testing Cisco UCS™, the IT team took an immediate liking to the simplicity, such as the one cable connectivity between the Cisco UCS and the core switch, and integrated fabric interconnect. Cisco and Intel’s close relationship with VMware was also a value add, as virtualization was a core part of planned consolidation efforts. The firm plans to migrate all live applications to Cisco UCS once the installation is fully complete.

“For our lawyers who travel significantly, they can go in to any office, whether it’s in Toronto, Montreal or Calgary, log into a phone and get their own extension,” says Srinivasan. “In addition to obvious business benefits, there are other ways that we are using the system. We advertise firm events, awards, and recognition through the phones. So it’s helping us do business better with our clients, and build morale and a stronger firm culture.”

An IT leader’s perspective

While Srinivasan is more than willing to share Stikeman Elliott’s technology story, he’s also equally excited to share his perspective on his technology partner. With Cisco technology, the firm has enabled new levels of work/life balance for lawyers by allowing them to serve clients from wherever they are, from any device they choose—quickly, powerfully and securely. The increases in mobility

Robert Gauthier in Stikeman Elliott’s new data center, powered by Intel and Cisco technologies

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and responsiveness have enhanced client service, and the flexibility, power, and availability of the platform have allowed the IT team to push the boundaries on what is considered “traditional” legal IT.

“Cisco has done many things right,” says Srinivasan. “It’s definitely moving in the right direction in terms of creating real ‘business’ technology. It’s bringing an application

mentality to a technology company, moving past networking and phones to providing what companies need to keep up with intensifying trends. Cisco has the right partners and made the right acquisitions to help its customers leverage the platform strategically with solutions including WebEx, video, voice, social, and collaboration technologies. It’s an advantage for us because we can innovate internally, be the first to market in our sector with progressive

technology capabilities, and pass those benefits on to our clients.”

Pilot and Discovery Workshop Offers

Speak to your Cisco or Channel Partner representative about desktop virtualization, VXI pilot offers, and the custom Cisco Discovery Workshop. For more, visit: www.UnleashingIT.com

Advanced technology and budding nations can present a chicken-and-egg scenario. Which comes first? Does the progress of a developing country stimulate technology adoption? Or can advanced technology be used to push a nation forward?

For DAI, which has been working on the frontlines of global development since 1970, it’s clearly the latter. DAI has helped more than 150 countries, many of which have struggled to recover from political or military conflict, with the basic building blocks of democracy. The company offers services that enhance economic growth, municipal governance, resource management, public health, and national stability. “We implement development solutions and manage programs,” says Larry Campbell, Vice President of Information Management and Technology for DAI, “that push emerging countries forward.”

In 2005, DAI adopted a full suite of Oracle applications to support the company’s rapid growth and global expansion. The large, mission-critical Oracle footprint facilitates everything from DAI’s enterprise resource planning (ERP), financials, and human

resources to local governance, risk mitigation, procurement, and project enablement.

The only problem was deploying and maintaining these applications in more than 100 DAI offices around the world. The answer: managed application services within a private, multi-tenant cloud. “We are not a technology company,” says Campbell. “Everything we do needs to be focused on international development, not application and systems administration.”

DAI’s mission-critical Oracle applications are now managed by NaviSite and hosted in the NaviCloud Platform. Built on the Cisco® Unified Computing System™ (UCS), which is powered by Intel® Xeon® processors, the NaviCloud Platform is a robust, virtualized infrastructure deployed as multiple, secure clouds in NaviSite’s data centers.

“Letting someone else manage our mission-critical applications means we don’t have to spend our time babysitting a data center at our headquarters in Maryland,” Campbell says. “Instead, our IT team can be in the field actively supporting

our customers.” This has allowed DAI’s IT personnel to support the implementation of a legislative tracking system in Tajikistan, for example, and advise the Ministry of Finance in Amman, Jordan, on e-business application deployment. In the past, these projects would have required third-party IT consultants and service providers.

“Hiring external consultants can be costly and we don’t get the domain knowledge that comes from those projects,” explains Campbell. “Because we have invested in the cloud and refocused our IT staff on customer support, more project revenue stays with DAI and we can apply what we learn in other countries and with other customers. We’re actively building our skills, our knowledge, and our differentiation.”

More information

For a NaviSite white paper More than ROI and information on Cisco cloud proof-of-concept, workshop, and assessment services, visit:www.UnleashingIT.com

Using the cloud to help build nations




Answers from the following participants have been edited for clarity and brevity:

Jake Smith, Advanced Server Technologies Manager, Intel

Edwin Yuen, Director of Cloud and Virtualization Strategy, Microsoft

Adam Hawley, Senior Director of Virtualization Product Management, Oracle

Parag Patel, Vice President of Global Strategic Alliances, VMware

Roland Wartenberg, Director of Strategic Alliances, Citrix

Sidney Morgan, Distinguished Engineer, Data Center Strategy, Cisco

Unleashing IT: From a customer’s perspective, what are the most common barriers to virtualizing mission-critical applications?

Jake Smith, Intel: IT departments don’t like to put all of their eggs in one basket, and with any new deployment comes a measure of uncertainty. This is especially true for applications deemed “mission-critical.” So it’s a matter of comfort level, and also how mission-critical is defined. Email and web services, which are increasingly virtualized, have become mission-critical for most companies.

Edwin Yuen, Microsoft: From a technology perspective, growth, capacity, integration, and management continue to be concerns.

But people are often the biggest barrier because they are comfortable with their roles and environments. Application virtualization leads to questions such as: How to assign applications to a virtual server, how to manage and deliver the applications, and how to present virtualization to the business.

Adam Hawley, Oracle: Many organizations fear the potential performance impact on their mission-critical applications and end users. While mission-critical doesn’t always imply high performance, tremendous improvements have been made to provide near native performance and scalability—not only for virtualized hardware, but also software.

Parag Patel, VMware: There are technology considerations, such as application performance, fault tolerance, and availability. And there are human considerations, such as training, IT administration, and change management.

Roland Wartenberg, Citrix: Stability, security, reliability, and compliance are the primary barriers. When it comes to mission-critical applications, organizations want control of their data and assurance that it will be available.

Sidney Morgan, Cisco: Whether it’s through testing or experience, most organizations trust virtualization technologies at this point. But they have concerns about the journey, and how to get to the end point with the least amount of

disruption or downtime. It can feel a bit like building an airplane that’s already in flight.

Unleashing IT: Are these barriers real or perceived?

Jake Smith, Intel: It’s a little bit of both. Virtualization technologies have come a long way and tremendous strides have been made to improve availability and reliability, with 99.99 percent uptime. But when it comes to mission-critical applications, some organizations want 100 percent uptime, so there is still room for improvement.

Edwin Yuen, Microsoft: Both. Many of the technology barriers are perceived, but comfort levels and uncertainty surrounding change—the human element—are real. Overcoming them is a matter of focusing on the benefits of virtualization, both for the IT organization and for the business.

Adam Hawley, Oracle: IT teams are rightfully conservative when it comes to mission-critical applications. They don’t want to take chances with things that impact the business. But in many cases this is fear-driven and not knowledge-driven. Some people think you have to put a bunch of VMs (virtual machines) on a single server, and fear the unpredictability that might come with it. Others choose to deploy one VM per server to get the operational benefits of virtualization in addition to high, predictable performance.

Mission-critical application virtualization: An industry roundtable

When it comes to virtualizing mission-critical applications, fear is more prevalent than downtime. Planning is more important than provisioning. And standardization, automation, and agility can be found at the end of the rainbow. Unleashing IT spoke with several industry leaders to better understand recent trends and gather expert advice about application virtualization. Here’s what we learned.

Leaders from Intel®, Microsoft, Oracle, VMware, Citrix, and Cisco provide perspective and advice for virtualizing and cloud-enabling enterprise applications.

Unleashing IT10

Parag Patel, VMware: There are fewer concerns about the technology, but every company has questions about its internal roadmap: what applications to virtualize, when to virtualize them, and how to roll them out effectively. The answers are unique for every company, but the questions are common for every significant change or technology deployment.

Roland Wartenberg, Citrix: Some are real, others are perceived. Apprehension about security is legitimate, but mostly with public clouds. Private or multi-tenant clouds give much more control and peace of mind. Concerns about reliability and stability issues are largely things of the past. Compliance really depends on the organization and its particular requirements.

Sidney Morgan, Cisco: Concerns are always real, and any change comes with risk. To overcome virtualization barriers, planning and communication are critical. You need the right team and skill sets. You need a clear understanding of outcomes and benefits. And you need to set expectations accordingly.

Unleashing IT: When should a company virtualize its mission-critical applications?

Jake Smith, Intel: The decision lies with the CIO and IT management. In most cases, virtualization should be happening now, but at a pace that is comfortable and feasible. Make virtualization the standard

first and worry about the roadblocks thereafter. You will invariably reap the cost savings that would otherwise be placed into capital equipment, and you’ll likely realize tremendous gains in flexibility, manageability, and performance.

Edwin Yuen, Microsoft: It’s all about asking the right questions. Are we in a position to maximize virtualization? What are the business and IT benefits? How long until those benefits are realized? These questions were historically focused on the hardware infrastructure, but applications must be considered as well. And organizations need to balance the risk of change—real or perceived—with the anticipated benefits.

Adam Hawley, Oracle: With Oracle’s virtualization technologies, nearly every application can be virtualized, from test and development to mission-critical.

Parag Patel, VMware: The longer you delay virtualization, the longer you lose the cost, agility, and maintenance benefits that come with it. Scheduled maintenance, software upgrades, and hardware refreshes often present a good, practical window of opportunity to make the switch.

Roland Wartenberg, Citrix: It depends on the application. Legacy applications, licensing implications, and maintenance and upgrade plans should factor into any decision. It also depends on comfort and

confidence levels. Virtualization should deliver the right benefits at the right time.

Sidney Morgan, Cisco: Operations, business processes, and applications all need to be ready. Do you have the right team and skill sets in place? Have expectations been set and change management processes been defined so the entire corporation is on the same page? Do you have a thorough understanding of the application environment, its requirements, and its dependencies? If you can answer ‘yes’ to these questions, it’s probably the right time to push forward.

Unleashing IT: When should a company not virtualize its mission-critical applications?

Jake Smith, Intel: This is mainly a question of utilization, and it’s different for every company. If a mission-critical application is already running on the latest server architecture and the utilization rate is high, for example, a change may not make sense. But in most other cases, application virtualization is almost always worth it.

Edwin Yuen, Microsoft: You shouldn’t virtualize if you don’t have full buy-in from the business and executive management. You also shouldn’t virtualize if the potential risks outweigh the potential benefits. This seems obvious, but some feel pressure to virtualize and move forward without evaluation and justification. There are no

Answers from: (1) Jake Smith, Advanced Server Technologies Manager, Intel (2) Edwin Yuen, Director of Cloud and Virtualization Strategy, Microsoft (3) Adam Hawley, Senior Director of Virtualization Product Management, Oracle (4) Parag Patel, Vice President of Global Strategic Alliances, VMware (5) Roland Wartenberg, Director of Strategic Alliances, Citrix (6) Sidney Morgan, Distinguished Engineer, Data Center Strategy, Cisco.

2. 3.1.


silver bullets, only problems, opportunities, and potential solutions. Organizations must carefully consider the specific issues they are trying to solve, the options at their disposal, and the benefits and risks of each option. Analysis is important.

Adam Hawley, Oracle: Readiness is the key. If a company doesn’t have experience with virtualization and hasn’t taken steps to standardize its infrastructure or processes, it may not be ready for application virtualization.

Parag Patel, VMware: There are no longer technical reasons to avoid virtualization, only operational, process, and political reasons. But these are people and organizational issues, not virtualization concerns.

Roland Wartenberg, Citrix: Companies shouldn’t move forward without the latest foundational technologies. They shouldn’t virtualize if they aren’t confident it will deliver exactly what they expect and need. And they should take a close look at the performance requirements and licensing costs of their applications to determine whether it makes sense.

Sidney Morgan, Cisco: Applications built for scale-out environments and some ultra high-performance computing applications may need further analysis. You can still virtualize these applications, but you may not get the full benefit of virtualization and the licensing costs could be high. In any case, you’ll want to carefully consider

the application, the expected benefits of virtualization, and the costs involved.

Unleashing IT: What are some considerations and advice for those thinking of virtualizing their mission-critical applications?

Jake Smith, Intel: As I mentioned earlier, make virtualization the standard first and break down the barriers second. It will be worth it. But be smart about which workloads and applications you virtualize; it has to make sense for the company from both IT and business standpoints.

Edwin Yuen, Microsoft: The key is planning, planning, planning. Like a builder, you want to measure twice, cut once. Virtualization is not the end game, so you need to consider both the short and long term. Establish a foundation, and then build on it over time. Invest in software that will support your long-term goals and be prepared to maximize those investments in the future.

Adam Hawley, Oracle: Companies should benchmark and test their options to determine the risk/reward profile of virtualizing their mission-critical applications. Make sure management tools and applications are tightly aligned. And be sure to standardize your infrastructure and processes to get the most out of virtualization.

Parag Patel, VMware: Develop a rationale and business case for application virtualization, including the expected

benefits. Then get buy-in from relevant stakeholders and the business groups that will rely on the applications being virtualized. You’ll also want to develop a clear roadmap, be realistic about internal skill sets and gaps, and get help when and where it’s needed.

Roland Wartenberg, Citrix: Be sure to develop a long-term plan and keep the big picture in mind as you pursue short-term projects and benefits. You’ll need the right knowledge, skill sets, and best practices. If you don’t have these in-house, work with a systems integrator or service provider who has virtualization experience and can guide you through the process.

Sidney Morgan, Cisco: Start with the least complex and least critical applications, then learn from them so you are ready for mission-critical virtualization. To make the largest impact on the business, you’ll want to transition IT into a service. More than just virtualization, this includes the development of a service portfolio and taxonomies for how those services are consumed, managed, and provisioned. Make sure to monetize your services, because if they are free, they will be over consumed.

“Like a builder, you want to measure twice, cut once. Virtualization is not the end game, so you need to consider both the short and long term.” Edwin Yuen, Director, Cloud and Virtualization Strategy, Microsoft Corp.

6.5.

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ExperiencesTechnology refresh changes the game at Avago Technologies

The stakes were high. The bet was all in. The result was better than imagined. Yet ask the players and they’ll tell you it really wasn’t much of a gamble in the first place.

When Avago Technologies “bet the company” that it would be able to migrate its entire Oracle application stack to the Intel® Xeon® processor-based Cisco® Unified Computing System™ (UCS), the San Jose, California-based business knew it was breaking new ground.

But when you’re a global designer and manufacturer of optoelectronics and analog interface components in the highly competitive semiconductor industry, latitude for risk comes with the territory, says CIO Bob Rudy.

“At the end of the day, my board directive is to have the lowest ‘IT as a percentage of revenue’ in the industry at all times. That’s my over-arching number one objective and the vector we’re always on,” says Rudy. “The migration to Cisco UCS™ was one of the biggest decisions we made to reduce total cost. We took the chance and it worked.”

Since moving to the new platform, Avago Technologies’ IT costs are hovering at a remarkable 1.17 percent of total revenue, down from 6.8 percent. The decrease, says Rudy, is primarily a result of the increase in capacity and speed, which is in turn driving several business and operational efficiencies.

The time to create daily on-line transaction processing (OLTP) reports is down to just 8 minutes from 30-40 minutes while batch processing jobs and extract, transform, load (ETL) activities related to the Oracle business intelligence (BI) platform now take 2-3 hours to run as opposed to 6-8 hours. Supply chain planning used to take 10-12 hours to run; now it’s down to just a few, removing the need to perform manual overrides and exceptions in the event of unexpected changes. New applications are also brought on-line faster because everything now goes onto one virtualized footprint.

For the business units, such improvements mean better visibility into inventory levels as well as the ability to optimize gross margins by making pricing decisions on the fly, meet promised delivery dates, and perform more transactions in less time.


All of which leads to higher customer satisfaction levels.

“In the competitive semiconductor landscape of huge up-and-down cycles, managing our costs in real time is paramount,” notes Rudy.

Avago Technologies migrated to its new enterprise platform in less than two days, with no disruption to business. All 24 Cisco UCS B200 Blade servers connect to Cisco Nexus® 7000 Series Switches and EMC storage through a single pair of Cisco UCS 6100 Series Fabric Interconnects. The company’s Oracle

production environment includes Oracle Linux, Oracle RAC 11g, and Oracle E-Business Suite. In addition to Cisco, EMC, VMware, and Oracle, the company also worked with HCL Technologies, a Cisco partner, to create service profiles for its Linux and VMware servers.

The migration was part of a regular technology refresh that the company completes every five years. Shreyas Shah, Senior Director of Global IT for Avago Technologies, says targets for reducing operational costs and increasing business continuity were exceeded on all fronts.

“At the end of the day, my board directive is to have the lowest ‘IT as a percentage of revenue’ in the industry at all times.” Bob Rudy, CIO, Avago Technologies

After migrating its Oracle application stack to an Intel Xeon-powered Cisco UCS, Avago Technologies reported the following game-changing results:

• IT cost now hovers at just 1.17 percent of total revenue

• Operational costs are down by 40 percent despite adding a third full data center

• Average utilization is 20-30 percent compared to 80-90 percent previously

• Improved cycle times mean business users receive better data faster

Rudy reflects on his IT team’s decision to bet the company on Cisco UCS

Unleashing IT14

“We haven’t had a single business disruption since we’ve been live on our new platform,” says Shah. “We’re building a higher availability environment and de-risking any kind of IT-level failures that impact business.”

Another advantage is that the company was able to build a third full-sized data center in Colorado to serve as a dedicated disaster recovery site, performing remote replication over a distance of 8800 miles. “Our operational costs for three data centers today is 40 percent less than what we had before with two data centers, and yet our capacity utilization is a fraction of what it was with our previous design,” says Shah, noting that average utilization is just 20-30 percent compared to 80-90 percent in the old environment.

Not surprisingly, Avago Technologies CEO Hock E. Tan is one of the migration’s biggest fans. The savings were better than expected and the resulting capacity means the company can double in size without impacting its current operating environment.

“Because the business units see what we’ve pulled off on the enterprise application side, they are now looking at adopting this platform as well,” says Rudy.

Avago Technologies’ Wireless Semiconductor Division has implemented Cisco high-memory rack servers and is currently experiencing a 15-20 percent improvement in the time it takes to run jobs. Meanwhile, the ASIC Product Division is considering Cisco UCS as the underlying infrastructure for its high-performance grid.

“Our CEO likes to acknowledge game-changing deliverables and this was one of them,” says Rudy. “My argument is that someone has to be willing to be first. But when you look at the track record of the partners involved, combined with a tremendous IT team who always makes things work, how much of a risk was it?”

Assessment offer

Cisco and Intel have teamed with industry-leading consulting companies that can assess your mission-critical application environments and make infrastructure recommendations to lower operating costs and increase performance. To engage with Cisco and qualify for a complimentary assessment, visit: www.UnleashingIT.com

Avago’s Shah (right) and Rudy (left) report that targets were executed on all fronts. Also pictured, Avago 10G Ethernet SFP+ Transceiver.



For KEMET, a leading provider of high-performance capacitance solutions, growth opportunities are twofold. Organic growth focuses primarily on targeting big opportunity specialty markets including automotive, military, medical, cloud computing providers, and green energy. And inorganic growth stems from calculated acquisitions.

“Our high-level business objectives are clear: acquire strategically and launch specialty products swiftly to meet cresting opportunities,” says Brian Burch, CIO, KEMET. “So we need to be a rapid responder in how we assimilate changes into our environment–whether it’s a new company, a new product line, a manufacturing change, or stepped up production in a particular plant. The faster we can execute, the faster we can realize the revenue or reduce the cost.”

Consolidating applications

Burch’s approach to consolidation was measured and precise. It started with an in-house private cloud for workload and support insight. The goal was to categorize workloads and understand compute requirements fully to evaluate future management options more effectively, including hosted cloud solutions.

KEMET redid its core data center and built a second one for replication. Burch justified this approach to the business by channeling budget allotted to third-party disaster recovery to fund the two new data centers. And the strategy paid off. Burch has two new state-of-the-art data centers with the most current technology. And he improved his recovery footprint significantly—

from recovering five percent of production servers in 72 hours to recovering 100 percent of production servers in 12 hours.

When it came time to choose a platform, Burch did his due diligence, and the Intel® Xeon® processor-based Cisco® Unified Computing System™ (UCS) moved to the forefront for many reasons. “It went beyond price; we looked at capabilities, opportunities to lower operational costs through simplified management, the interface between network and storage for high-density environments, and future technology direction. There was also a high level of accountability in a very supported environment. The collaboration between Cisco, VMware, and EMC means that I get a much cleaner response when I have production issues in my complex environment.”

Burch is now running all but two of his mission-critical systems on Cisco UCS™, including a new Oracle E-Business Suite. Performance is better. Management is easier. Fault tolerance has improved with the flexibility to move profiles around or recover in the secondary facility.

Burch has also noticed significant changes in KEMET’s infrastructure support model. With the common interface and interconnectedness of the new platform, the server, network, SAN, and storage groups must work together as a finely tuned machine to be successful.

“My IT team now works together much more closely,” says Burch. “As a department, we have enhanced systems

awareness, which improves our ability to plan complex implementations or troubleshoot complex problems. We now have to look at our environment from a systems perspective, and it’s been a huge advantage to how we operate.”

A more agile environment

With the consolidated data center, new server platform, and transformed infrastructure support model, Burch feels that IT is positioned perfectly to support the business in its strategic growth. IT has renewed agility, the ability to expand or reconfigure the environment, and improved performance. And the business is noticing.

“We’ve turned up several new systems rapidly, which before would have required multiple server installs,” says Burch. “The test and development instances for our new Oracle E-Business Suite were much easier and faster because we had more horsepower and more memory. Validating that and getting it into production quickly was critical because that application is essentially running our business. And that’s just one example of many as to how agile we’ve become with a consolidated environment running on Cisco UCS.”

Proof-of-concept

To request a proof-of-concept contact your Intel or Cisco Account Representative, Channel Partner, or call Cisco at 1-800-553-6387 and select option 1. For more on Cisco UCS, visit: www.UnleashingIT.com

IT as a rapid responder for business growth

Experiences

Consolidating data centers gives KEMET the agility it needs to support organic growth.


Unleashing IT16

After virtualizing its infrastructure, mission-critical applications, and desktops, Seattle Children’s Hospital is a model of possibility and achievement.

Not enough security. Not enough control.

When it comes to virtualizing mission-critical applications and putting them in a cloud, these are two of the concerns that continue to give organizations pause. And yet, security and control were two of the reasons that prompted Seattle Children’s Hospital to fully embrace application virtualization.

“We are way ahead of everyone else,” says Wes Wright, CTO of Seattle Children’s Hospital, which is ranked among the nation’s top 10 children’s hospitals. “I don’t think we have any mission-critical applications that aren’t virtualized.”

Their efforts started in 2007, a time when

many companies had never considered virtualization or heard of cloud computing. Today, with countless companies still taking baby steps toward these computing paradigms, Seattle Children’s is a model of possibility and achievement.

“We had a long-term strategy and we stuck with it,” says Jake Hughes, Chief Technical Architect for Infrastructure Systems at Seattle Children’s. “In retrospect, it was probably a bit risky to put all of our eggs in such a new basket. But we focused on the benefits, conducted pilot projects to prove the value of virtualization, and it caught on like wildfire.”

Focusing on business needs

Most companies pursue virtualization and cloud computing, at least initially, to reduce the time and cost of IT administration. Seattle Children’s, however, focused squarely on business improvement and enablement.

“We don’t do IT for IT’s sake,” says Wright. “For us, it’s all about making the business better. And that means improving clinician productivity, information security, and patient care.”

Leaders of the (virtualization) pack

Seattle Children’s Hughes (left) and Wright examine their new, virtualized environment

Experiences


Seattle Children’s virtualized nearly all of its servers, roughly 400 in all, and brought 5500 workstations under central management. Using Citrix XenApp, the hospital then virtualized more than 450 individual executables, including the vast majority of its point-of-care and clinical information applications.

“Our assets and data were previously distributed across a 7000 node network,” explains Hughes. “By bringing everything back into a virtualized data center, we were able to establish a secure method of accessing applications and data that is fully encrypted and easier to control.”

While information security and control improved, information access and clinician productivity continued to be challenging. It typically took 4 minutes or more to log onto each hospital workstation, which caregivers had to do dozens of times each day.

“It was sometimes taking 10 minutes for our clinicians to log on, open an application, and get the information they need,” says Hughes. “That time should be spent with a patient instead of a workstation. We wanted to make it easier and faster for our clinicians to access applications and information, so we started looking into VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure).”

Because Seattle Children’s had already virtualized its server infrastructure and applications, desktop virtualization was a logical—and pain free—next step. The hospital deployed Citrix XenDesktop, giving users fast, cohesive access to Windows 7 desktops and clinical applications from client devices found throughout the hospital.

Improving productivity and reducing costs

Seattle Children’s state-of-the-art, virtualized IT environment, all running on the Intel® Xeon® processor-based Cisco® Unified Computing System™ (UCS), has become one of the healthcare industry’s most advanced private clouds.

With virtualized applications and desktops, caregivers can access clinical systems and information in seconds instead of minutes—giving them at least 45 extra minutes each day with patients. Data is centralized and more secure, improving patient privacy and safety. And although it was a secondary priority behind business enablement, Seattle Children’s has dramatically reduced the time and cost of IT administration.

The hospital’s IT team previously spent 90 percent of its time chasing repetitive workstation issues and errors, and

managing roughly 5500 different instances of more than 400 applications. Today, applications and desktops are managed from a central server, eliminating the need to update 7000 nodes individually.

“We essentially stream our applications,” says Hughes. “With isolation and separation from the server image, we can update our applications independent of the server or virtual desktop. It’s nimble, flexible, and fast.”

“Over the next 5 years, we anticipate that we’ll save more than $6 million in hardware and energy costs, as well as thousands of hours in staff time,” adds Wright. “This allows us to dedicate more of our valuable resources to delivering the best care possible to patients and families, which is our number one job. Every minute of staff time we give back and every dollar we save lead directly to better care.”

Pilot and Discovery Workshop Offers

Speak to your Cisco or Channel Partner representative about desktop virtualization, VXI pilot offers, and the custom Cisco Discovery Workshop. Visit www.UnleashingIT.com for more information.

Desktop virtualization makes it easier and faster to access clinical applications


Unleashing IT18

ExperiencesTaking a product to new markets

How iSentry is using application virtualization and cloud enablement to quickly expand its business.

“We don’t make IT decisions,” says Gareth Evans, CIO of iSentry. “We make business decisions that are supported by IT.”

iSentry provides software and services that facilitate secure document transfers, document tracking, and e-signatures. The company offers a robust Digital Content Exchange (DCX) platform that allows organizations to seamlessly deliver and receive confidential information over the Internet.

“Our industry was built on courier services,” explains Evans. “Electronic delivery is obviously much faster and more cost-effective, but standard email is neither secure nor traceable.”

With heavy regulation following the recent collapse of financial and mortgage markets, the necessity for security and tracking has only amplified. This means big business for companies like iSentry, if it can capitalize on the increased demand for secure document transfer, audit trails, and verified signatures.

“Our largest clients have many tens of thousands of account holders and our solutions

process many millions of transactions every year,” says Evans. “The requirement for DCX solutions and services continues to expand, in both traditional markets and new sectors.”

Branching into new markets

iSentry has historically focused on the mortgage industry and its 72-hour window to deliver, view, and verify loan disclosures. The company has also helped support the banking sector’s need for secure document exchange. Countless industries have similar requirements—including the insurance, credit card, tax, and healthcare markets—and iSentry leaders are keen to serve them.

“The core functionality of our DCX product is broadly applicable and increasingly needed,” Evans explains. “It’s just a matter of tweaking our software for each industry and each customer, and putting it into production.”

In the past, such customization required new equipment for a pilot and additional equipment for production, the commissioning of which slowed down a rollout by months. In these hyper-competitive and rapidly changing markets, the turnaround wasn’t fast enough. iSentry needed a way to pursue new markets and deliver tailored software solutions quickly and cost-effectively. And due to the very nature of its software and services, data security and


control were of paramount importance.

Application virtualization and cloud enablement were the only answers.

Innovation in the cloud

Companies traditionally focus on total cost of ownership (TCO) when developing a business case for managed cloud services. But while TCO is a powerful argument, Brooks Borcherding, President of NaviSite, says the true value of enterprise cloud services extends beyond saving money to fueling innovation that creates a competitive advantage. With nearly 1400 customers, 10 state-of-the-art data centers, and roughly 650 IT professionals, NaviSite is a leading worldwide provider of enterprise-class, cloud-enabled hosting, managed applications, and services.

“Cloud computing lowers the barriers to trying out new services and business strategies,” says Borcherding. “Knowing they can provision a new infrastructure in minutes and turn it off just as easily, IT teams can afford to be more creative than they could if every experiment required budget commitments for servers, storage, and switching.”

In virtualizing its DCX solution suite and running it on NaviSite’s NaviCloud Platform, iSentry is getting the best of two worlds: the flexibility and scalability of cloud computing with the central management and granular control of an internal data center. Built on the Intel® Xeon® processor-based Cisco® Unified Computing System™ (UCS), the NaviCloud Platform offers a robust, virtualized infrastructure deployed as secure, private clouds in NaviSite’s data centers.

“Each of our customers has slightly different systems, processes, and requirements,” says Evans, “so we needed the ability to quickly bespoke, test, and deploy different versions of our software. NaviCloud gives us tremendous flexibility and scalability, but we also have control over our environment, our rules, and our firewalls.”

As a result, iSentry can quickly customize its software for each customer—in days versus months. And it can branch into new markets—in months versus a year or more.

“Application virtualization and cloud enablement have helped us accelerate the

business cycle of idea to proof-of-concept to production,” says Evans. “We can do in days or weeks what used to take months or years, at a fraction of the cost and risk. If something doesn’t catch on, that’s okay. We’ll try something else.”

“I believe the cloud is this decade’s enabling technology that will ultimately drive business growth and success,” says Borcherding. “iSentry is a prime example. Instead of simply maintaining the status quo, they are using technology to push their business forward.

“Nobody wants to be the last CIO to spend two years and $10 million building a data center,” he concludes, “when they can be creating differentiation, improving customer satisfaction, and pursuing new market opportunities.”

More information

For a NaviSite white paper More than ROI and information on Cisco cloud proof-of-concept and workshop services, visit: www.UnleashingIT.com

“Application virtualization and cloud enablement have helped us accelerate the business cycle of idea to proof-of-concept to production.” Gareth Evans, CIO, iSentry


Unleashing IT20

Energizing the speed of operations

Southwestern Energy has virtualized its infrastructure to improve drilling efficiency and minimize downtime.The natural gas industry is experiencing a renaissance. Not long ago, there was fear of depleted resources in the United States, and conjecture about the need to import natural gas from other countries. With recent advancements in geological, seismic, and telemetry technologies, however, there is renewed opportunity for companies like Southwestern Energy.

“With better exploration and production capabilities,” says Jim Vick, CIO of Southwestern Energy, “our business has been growing at a rapid clip.”

The Houston-based company reported a 24 percent increase in gas and oil production in 2011 compared to 2010. With business booming, Vick and his team are tasked with supporting and helping drive Southwestern Energy’s growth trajectory.

“The business will not wait for us,” says Jason Simons, Manager of Systems Administration at Southwestern Energy. “We need to make sure our IT environment can support our evolving operations—quickly and with minimal downtime.”

Much of these operations are conducted in remote, challenging environments where natural gas can be found some 8000

feet underground. Cell service is scarce. Power outlets and T1 connections are nonexistent. Mud and rocks are plentiful.

“We can’t afford to spend weeks or months setting up IT systems at each drill site, and we can’t afford downtime once they’re running,” says Jim Mayfield, Manager of Network Engineering at Southwestern Energy. “Every minute that we’re not drilling impacts our revenue.”

Establishing new drill sites

Natural gas exploration and production have become technologically demanding activities. To set up a new drill site, Southwestern Energy must establish unified communications between the field, company headquarters, contractors, and suppliers; link the drill site with backend ERP applications to support operational processes; integrate geographic, geological, and seismic systems; and, configure monitoring and telemetry equipment for real-time data capture and analysis.

“We pride ourselves in being economical and efficient,” says Vick, “and that means getting new drill sites up and running as quickly as possible.”

Southwestern Energy establishes hundreds of drill sites each year. To do so efficiently and cost-effectively, the company has virtualized the vast majority of its network, compute, and storage infrastructure using a validated FlexPod™ data center solution. Onsite communication trailers with satellite connectivity link field operations with the company’s unified communications, ERP, telemetry, and

Experiences


geographic information systems (GIS), via an all Cisco switched fabric network. And everything is running on the Intel® Xeon® processor-based Cisco® Unified Computing System™ (UCS).

“It used to take us weeks or months to set up the IT environment for a new drill site,” notes Simons. “Today, it takes hours. We no longer have to deploy physical servers or storage resources in the field.”

Supporting data intensive processes

Setting up new drill sites is one thing. Keeping them running and effectively dealing with all of the data they produce is another.

“Efficiency and uptime are two of our main goals. Equally important are safety and environmental preservation,” explains Vick. “We need to know exactly what’s

happening, from our home office to the well sites to the drill bits in the ground. Data continuity and integration are essential.”

With a constant stream of information being delivered from multiple drill locations, Southwestern Energy adds multiple terabytes of data to its infrastructure every month.

“Our virtual infrastructure allows us to collect and analyze large volumes of data—from all of our drill sites—in real time,” Vick adds. “This allows us to make fast, informed decisions that improve production and help us protect the environments in which we operate.”

Because the company’s systems and data are securely stored in a centralized, virtualized environment, reliability and scalability are no longer concerns. Southwestern Energy’s disaster recovery systems have also been virtualized and

now run on Cisco UCS™.

“Application performance and reliability have been outstanding, and we can expand our server and storage resources at a moment’s notice,” says Simons. “Our virtual environment helps us be fast, efficient, and safe. It has minimized downtime and enabled us to stay ahead of business growth.”

Proof-of-concept

To request a proof-of-concept contact your Intel or Cisco Account Representative, Channel Partner, or call Cisco at 1-800-553-6387 and select option 1. For more on the FlexPod data center solution, visit: www.UnleashingIT.com

When you’re about to hand over control of your IT infrastructure to a third-party service provider, it’s important to have a “meeting of the minds,” says Tony D’Alessandro, Vice-President and CIO at Avantor Performance Materials, a global leader in performance materials and chemistries based in Center Valley, Pennsylvania.

In the throes of an aggressive growth strategy that aims to increase its business to three or four times its current size within five years, Avantor made the strategic decision to implement SAP as a global IT integration platform, linking decentralized IT locations in the U.S., Mexico, Europe, Asia, and India. At the same time, the company was looking to leverage the benefits of an infrastructure-as-a-service model and that meant finding an SAP hosting partner that could respond quickly to changing needs.

Enter Secure-24 Inc. of Southfield, Michigan, one of the first SAP partners to be certified as a provider of cloud services.

“We had a meeting of the minds in terms of the responsiveness we were looking for,” says D’Alessandro, noting that Avantor was facing a tight timeline and needed its

SAP development environment to be up and running within 30 days. Beyond that, the company was looking for a partner that would respond quickly and effectively to “spur of the moment” changes as it continues to expand geographically, organically, and through acquisition.

Relying on its secure SAP cloud services model, powered by the Intel® Xeon® processor-based Cisco® Unified Computing System™ (UCS), Secure-24 provides Avantor with an on-demand, pay-as-you go infrastructure that not only meets desired speed and agility targets, but also provides the added benefit of a knowledgeable SAP technical team who understand the complexities of a comprehensive ERP implementation.

“Cisco UCS™ gives us the flexibility to move resources around so that we’re not stuck in the old way of doing business,” says George Surface, Vice President of SAP Services at Secure-24. “The flexibility and scalability of the platform allows our technical team to do things faster and better, giving us an edge over some of our competitors.”

For example, Avantor may receive an ad-hoc request to create a new client profile

in less time than normally required. Or, it may decide to change the scope of its SAP implementation, adding an additional component. Either way, Secure-24 responds.

Scheduled to go live with the first wave of its SAP implementation this spring, Avantor also has the ability to scale its hosted SAP infrastructure as required to accommodate additional resources when needed, such as the systems used to train employees during rollout. “We’re able to add that capacity, pay for it on a limited time frame, and then when our training period is over, essentially release it,” explains D’Alessandro. “Our ability to scale up and down makes this a very cost competitive solution.”

Assessment offer

Cisco and Intel have teamed with industry-leading consulting companies that can assess your mission-critical application environments and make infrastructure recommendations to lower operating costs and increase performance. To engage with Cisco and qualify for a complimentary assessment, visit: www.UnleashingIT.com

Cloud-based SAP services pave the way for growth at Avantor



Unleashing IT22

Build it and they won’t just come, they’ll also take flight. That’s the experience of Sparrow Health System, the largest healthcare organization in mid-Michigan, three years into an aggressive journey to transform patient care using information technology (IT).

“In 2009, people wondered, ‘Can we really do this successfully?’” recalls Thomas Bres, CIO at the Lansing, Michigan-based health system, noting that the main barrier to innovation was an increasingly unreliable IT network, prone to outages. “We’re now at a point where everybody wants to be a part of it,” he says.

The impetus for change was the need to move forward with a state-of-the-art electronic medical record implementation (EMR) and related cloud-based applications portfolio, internally referred to as iSparrow, and based on the EpicCare EMR from Epic Systems Corp. The “price of admission” was an overhaul of existing

LAN, WAN, and data infrastructures.

“Our goal was to create an integrated platform to ensure we have the seamless, fast flow of information required to arm our clinicians with the technology they need at the point of care, whether it’s information, video, or high-resolution images,” says Bres.

With the backing of senior management and a shared vision to be a national leader in quality and the patient experience, the 250 employees in Sparrow Health’s IT group embarked on a plan to deliver a medical-grade network, supported by desktop and server virtualization strategies. To help ensure the task was delivered on time with as few interruptions to caregivers as possible, the IT group relied heavily on teamwork, working closely with Cisco and Cisco partner Logicalis Inc. throughout the design, implementation, and support phases.

Sparrow Health System earns the trust of both IT and clinicians with an infrastructure upgrade that is leading the way for healthcare application delivery.

Medical-grade network soars above the ‘cloud’ at Sparrow

Experiences


Knowing that the iSparrow deployment would require capacity and resiliency at the back end, Sparrow Health System deployed the Cisco® MDS 9000 Series Multilayer SAN fabric switch to connect its three data hosting centers. To provide a foundation for future high-bandwidth applications such as video streaming and biomedical device monitoring, it deployed Cisco Catalyst® 6500 Series LAN switches at 23 remote medical campuses and the Cisco Nexus® 7000 Series switch at its main hospital site. Quality of service is addressed using Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS), WAN optimization software that maintains a robust connection by prioritizing traffic.

The resulting network infrastructure won the trust of both IT and clinicians, says Patrick Hale, CTO, Sparrow Health System. So much so, that the healthcare organization has already deployed iSparrow to 1500 remote users and is planning to bring another 7000 users on-line at the main hospital site in Lansing in December.

“We don’t just aim to be comparable with other hospitals,” says Hale. “We

want to lead. We want to transform healthcare, not just for Michigan, but really for the country.”

Leading the way means delivering applications such as single sign on, biomedical integration (where devices that monitor vital signs automatically update the electronic patient record, for example), and streaming video for telemedicine. And Sparrow Health System is right on track.

Within 90 days of rolling out the initial iSparrow deployment to remote medical practices, 90 percent of physicians qualified for meaningful use incentives under the federal Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record incentive programs. Initial physician users are issuing electronic orders and prescriptions in real time, accessing patient x-ray images and other historical data, and updating electronic records, from any device at any location.

The network is also enabling Sparrow Health System’s corporate growth strategy by making it easier to deliver

software and services to newly-acquired locations. For example, when the organization acquired its Ionia location in 2010, it leveraged its medical-grade network to justify placing a full-time radiologist there. When on-site workload is down, the radiologist accesses additional images via the network.

“We want IT to be a reason that patients come to our practices, to our hospitals and even to our community,” says Bres. “The next big thing is going to be: How do we use this technology to collaborate with each other and other healthcare facilities? We’ve gone from proving that we can do this, to being in a position where we now have to satisfy the demand for what we’ve created.”

Proof-of-concept

To request a proof-of-concept contact your Intel or Cisco Account Representative, Channel Partner, or call Cisco at 1-800-553-6387 and select option 1. For more on Cisco medical-grade networks, visit: www.UnleashingIT.com


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the Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. logo, Xeon, and Xeon Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.

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