Logicalis conducts IT makeover for Visiting Nurse
Health System including upgrades to network and phone system, email
migration and managed services.
Visiting Nurse Health System (VNHS) is the largest non-profit
homecare and hospice provider in Georgia. VNHS employs over 500
people including a very mobile staff of nurses, physical therapists
and other clinicians who serve more than 16,000 patients a year in
their homes and at the VNHS Hospice Atlanta Center.
Technology plays an important role in maintaining communications
between the multiple VNHS offices and their busy field staff. When
Christy Brice joined the agency as Chief Information Officer (CIO)
in 2006, she realized that several critical components needed
upgrading. The healthcare concern’s all-important Unified
Communications system was becoming less than dependable, for
example, and the file server and email server software was out of
date. The IT department had to scour the email store every weekend
to find room for new messages. Everything worked, but several
components were at the end of support, if not the end of life.
Brice remembers wondering anxiously every morning what surprises
awaited her that day.
Today, the VNHS IT infrastructure is a stable, scalable platform
able to serve the growing needs of VNHS for years to come. The
operating system is MS Windows Server 2003 with Active Directory
and the environment is now Exchange 2007. The Unified
Communications platform has been upgraded to Cisco Call Manager
Version 6, opening up the full range of unified communications
features that VNHS can add in at its own pace.
“Like renovating an old house”
Although the transformation of the VNHS IT infrastructure was
ultimatly successful, “This project was like renovating an old
house,” Brice recalls, “We encountered something unexpected at
every twist and turn. We’d put in something new, and it would break
something old.”
Everything was connected to everything else. Before they could
upgrade the Unified Communications system, for example, they needed
to upgrade Exchange which, of course, meant they needed to upgrade
their email. Throw into that mix the fact that the uninterruptible
power supplies at their existing datacenter could not accommodate
the new servers, and the whole datacenter needed to be re-located.
What began as a significant but manageable infrastructure upgrade
generated enough drama for a reality TV show.
A people project
The project at VNHS highlighted the importance of having not just
the right technology, but also the right people with the right
skills. Brice brought considerable experience to her role as CIO.
Before joining VNHS, she served as the Director of the Project
Management Organization at EarthLink, where she oversaw all major
company initiatives and led the execution of over 100 technology
projects. Prior to that she worked in a healthcare technology
practice for Ernst & Young and led the technology and
operations departments for two startup companies, focusing on
healthcare consulting and Internet technologies.
“Christy’s leadership through this project was phenomenal,” says
Logicalis’ Account Executive, Art Vinson, who met Brice at a Health
Information and Management Systems Society conference and
introduced her to Logicalis’ capabilities.
Logicalis Technical Consultant Charles Lan (CCIE) designed the
network, voicemail, and contact center upgrades. Much of the
existing Cisco network was at the end of its life and had been
patched several times over the years. Today, it is an exceptional
network. Logicalis’ Delivery Consultant, Geoff Watkins believes it
is robust enough, “to run video through it when VNHS is ready.” He
adds that he encourages adding unified communications capabilities
incrementally to avoid overwhelming users with new
technology.
Logicalis Managing Consultant - Email Management Practice, Tom
Bridge, headed up the migration from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2007.
After a preliminary trip to scope out the situation, Bridge arrived
in Atlanta on a Monday fully expecting to be back home for the
weekend. He was in Atlanta a month.
One of the challenges that complicated the migration was working
with a very mobile staff who took their technology for granted and
were in some cases less than enthusiastic about having to change
the way they used it. It was hard enough to schedule an opportunity
to update the software on their notebook computers; convincing them
that a new way of doing things was better than the way they had
been doing them for years was a hard sell.
Brice found the upgrade process to be a real eye-opener into how
the community at VNHS used technology. “The best thing to come out
of it was that the end users didn’t feel as much pain as we did,”
she adds. “We bared most of the brunt of it; and that’s okay.
That’s how you expect it to be in IT…that’s how you want it to
be.”
Blade Bright Spot
One bright spot in the project, notes Bridge, was the easy
implementation of the new blade servers from HP, which were
specially configured for this project by Logicalis’ Technical
Consultant, Matt Pennington.
We were able to configure and deploy six HP blades in 40 minutes,”
Bridge says. “That is really cool tech. You load the OS into the
management console and when a new blade is inserted, you just say,
‘Use this image and put it on this blade,’ and you’re done.”
Logicalis also installed an all-in-one storage system from
HP.
If she had to do it all over again, Brice says, one of the things
she would do differently would be to lean on Logicalis’ Managed
Services earlier than she did. “Their support has been
outstanding,” she enthuses, “I’m never made to feel like just
another number in the queue, and by working with them we know we
have the best practices in place. That’s what they do.”
Brice recently visited the Logicalis Enterprise Business Operations
Center (EBOC) in Cincinnati in anticipation of expanding the role
of Managed Services in the VNHS in the future.
There are a few things left to do to complete the make-over, but
“we’re out of crisis mode and into strategic mode. It’s been a good
ride,” Brice adds philosophically. “It was certainly never
boring.”