Health Insurer Switches to Exchange Server to Streamline ...



Overview

Country or Region: United States

Industry: Healthcare

Customer Profile

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City serves nearly 900,000 members in a 32-county area of Missouri and Kansas, making it the region’s largest provider of health benefits.

Business Situation

The company’s GroupWise 5.5 enterprise messaging system experienced frequent outages, did not keep up with corporate growth, and did not adequately support mobile workers.

Solution

To promote reliable communication and employee collaboration, the company standardized its IT infrastructure on Microsoft® Windows Server System™ integrated server software and switched to Microsoft Exchange Server 2003.

Benefits

■ Improved reliability

■ Simplified IT management

■ Enhanced security

■ Easier remote access

■ Effective employee collaboration

| | |“With Exchange Server, people are beginning to think in terms of using their computers to collaborate. With GroupWise, people would read their e-mail, and that was basically all.”

Kevin Sparks, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City

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| | | |Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City is the largest provider of health benefits in its 32-county|

| | | |region. In 2004, the company was suffering from frequent outages of its GroupWise 5.5 enterprise |

| | | |messaging system. This product also did not support the company’s growth, its expanding mobile and |

| | | |remote workforce, or its strategy to improve employee collaboration. Working with Horizons |

| | | |Consulting, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City switched |

| | | |to Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and standardized on Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated |

| | | |server software The new solution contributes to a simplified, more integrated IT environment, |

| | | |provides reliable communications, and is easier and less expensive to manage. It also supports more |

| | | |effective employee collaboration, especially for mobile workers. |

| | | | |

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Situation

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, has been serving customers since 1938. It is the largest health benefits provider in its region. The company’s more than 1,000 employees serve nearly 900,000 members in 32 counties surrounding its Kansas City, Missouri, headquarters. The company offers comprehensive health insurance and wellness programs to individuals, families, and employers. As the company develops innovative products for customers, revenues and membership continue to grow.

In 2004, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City was experiencing multiple and severe reliability problems with its enterprise messaging system, Novell GroupWise 5.5. “We had four serious issues with GroupWise,” says Kevin Sparks, Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City. “The first was reliability, including frequent server outages. The second was the inability of GroupWise to grow with our expanding business. The third was a compatibility problem with our operating environment. And fourth, GroupWise did not adequately support our growing base of remote workers and mobile communication devices.” For the last problem, the main issue was having to synchronize mobile devices by physically connecting them to a serial or USB port instead of synchronizing them in real time.

The operating-environment compatibility problem involved having to maintain two directory services. At that time, the company used both Novell Netware and the Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 Enterprise Edition operating system. Account information in the Novell eDirectory service did not integrate with information in the Active Directory® service. As a result, IT administration was complicated, and many employees had to use multiple accounts and passwords to access the company’s network.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City decided to address all these problems by upgrading its enterprise messaging system and standardizing its operating systems. For employee computers, the company had already deployed the Windows® XP operating system enterprisewide. “We liked Windows Server, and we liked Windows XP,” says Sparks. “We recognized the need to standardize, to move toward a homogeneous IT environment, and we knew Microsoft provides a high-quality offering, so we did not seriously consider adopting another company’s communication and collaboration products. It was a cost-of-ownership decision.”

Solution

In early 2005, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City chose to switch its enterprise messaging solution to Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise Edition communication and collaboration server. The company also decided to retire Novell Netware and standardize its IT infrastructure on Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition. Exchange Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 are part of Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software.

To support the migration, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City sought expert advice from Horizons Consulting, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner based in Jerseyville, Illinois. Horizons Consulting helps businesses develop IT strategies; design, install, and integrate software and hardware solutions; and manage and support IT projects. The company offers expertise in enterprise messaging, collaboration, and networking technologies, including, in particular, products and technologies that are part of Windows Server System.

Defining the IT Architecture

Over the next four months, the two companies worked together to define an IT architecture and develop a migration plan and deployment schedule. Specifically for enterprise messaging, the IT hardware included:

■ Three computers running Exchange Server 2003 to support the current nearly 1,300 mailboxes plus additional mailboxes as the company grows.

■ One additional server computer to support Microsoft Office Outlook® Web Access, an integrated component of Exchange Server 2003 that enables remote access to e-mail and schedules.

■ Two additional server computers to support data backups and disaster recovery.

Related IT infrastructure software included:

■ Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000, a highly scalable relational database with extensive management and development tools, easy-to-use business intelligence, and analysis and reporting services.

■ Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 to change, configure, and install software on employees’ computers over a network and to manage software and hardware assets by tracking inventory and usage.

■ Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 to provide comprehensive event management, including proactive monitoring and alerting, and trend analysis and reporting.

■ Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 to provide project portfolio and resource management capabilities.

■ Third-party software for message archiving and filtering.

■ Third-party server software to support PDAs and other portable devices not running Windows Mobile® (support for Windows Mobile is built into Exchange Server).

Many employees were already using Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003, including the Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 messaging and collaboration client. And the company would install Microsoft Office Project Standard 2003 for employees who needed it. To further support these workers, the company would use Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 to provide project portfolio and resource management capabilities.

Deploying Infrastructure Components

In July of 2005, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City began installing the software and configuring the new server computers. The company chose the Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) to proactively identify and help resolve configuration problems. Specifically, BPA performed a system health check and verified that bios settings, drivers, virus software, and more were up-to-date and compatible with one another. Because BPA collects configuration settings and performs network and protocol tests, it is ideal for setting up a new Exchange Server environment and for keeping it running reliably. And to help in retiring Novell eDirectory, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City chose the Microsoft Active Directory Migration Tool. With its easy-to-use wizards, this tool helps ensure a quick and efficient migration to a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory domain.

This phase of the solution’s deployment did not affect most employees, because the changes were not visible outside the IT department. New solution features were activated and tested but not widely announced. IT tasks performed during this period included enabling Outlook Web Access, configuring disaster recovery and backup software, preparing groups of files (called packages) for upcoming SMS 2003 deployments, configuring PDA synchronization procedures, and setting up meeting rooms and other resources for Exchange Server and Outlook 2003.

Deploying Exchange Server

Starting on a Friday evening, the company changed its DNS addresses, redirected new incoming mail, and decommissioned its GroupWise server computers. That night, all GroupWise accounts, passwords, and mailboxes, including folders, calendars, tasks, and so on, were transferred from GroupWise to Exchange Server. To update employee computers, the company deployed customized SMS 2003 packages that installed themselves automatically when the computers were restarted.

On Saturday morning, the company began testing the new system, and Sunday was reserved for final quality assurance and validation. The new solution was officially live enterprisewide on Monday morning at 7:00 A.M. “We did it in very rapid time,” says Sparks. “The whole project took only six months, and the migration itself took only one weekend—for more than 1,000 employees and a 500-gigabyte data store. We’re very happy with the deployment. It was relatively easy and completely on time and on budget.”

To prepare for any technical problems and to answer employee questions, the company created a Rapid Response Team. A measure of the migration’s success was how little the Rapid Response Team had to do: only 8 mailboxes out of 1,291 failed to open, a success rate of 99.4 percent; and only 9 employee accounts out of 1,050 required technical intervention, a success rate of 99.1 percent. These few problems were resolved within three days. The Rapid Response Team also received 43 technical support requests from employees and was able to resolve them on average in less than 9 minutes each.

Benefits

With the new solution in place, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City has gained a more homogenous IT environment that is easier and less expensive to manage. The enterprise messaging system in particular is more secure and much more reliable than GroupWise was. Easier-to-use features, including dramatically improved support for remote access, enable nearly effortless communication for users and more-effective employee collaboration.

Improved Reliability

The new solution contributes to a stable IT environment that no longer suffers from routine outages. “GroupWise was down a couple of times every week, and we’re not talking minutes, but hours at a time,” says Linda Jewett, Senior Project Manager for IT at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City. “With Exchange Server, the number of e-mail outages was immediately reduced by 55 percent, and they’ve continued to decline. And when they did happen, they were easier to fix, didn’t last very long, and often went unnoticed by employees. In fact, in recent months, there have been no Exchange Server outages at all. People can now rely on it because they know it’s dependable.”

Simplified IT Management

The more integrated IT infrastructure is easier for IT staff to maintain. “Our IT administrators are finding it much easier now to manage the Microsoft environment,” says Jewett. “This frees their time so that they can concentrate on other tasks, especially because there are fewer outages.”

The simplified environment also uses server computer resources more efficiently. “With GroupWise, we had a problem with e-mail server volumes filling up,” says Sparks. “This contributed to the system’s overall unreliability. Now, disk space requirements are more efficient, and storage management is much easier. We can more precisely define mailbox size limitations, for example.”

The IT department also benefits from more readily available support. “There’s a lot more expertise in the marketplace for Exchange Server, very high quality resources like Horizons Consulting, for example,” says Sparks. “With GroupWise, support was harder to find and thus more expensive.”

Efficiencies that arise from a more homogeneous infrastructure also translate into cost savings. “Nearly every time we wanted to add a feature to GroupWise, we had to bolt-on another software adapter,” says Sparks. “We had to do this for our backup and recovery solution and our PDA synchronization. Third-party software providers were charging us extra for these adapters, whereas support for Exchange Server is generally provided out of the box. Plus, making changes to GroupWise often required expensive technical support. We could see that as our company continued to grow, GroupWise would become increasingly and prohibitively costly.”

Enhanced Security

Because Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City handles sensitive medical information and is subject to regulations governing patient confidentiality, the company is very concerned about security, especially the security of data that’s accessed by remote workers. “Security starts with Active Directory authentication,” explains Jewett. “The system doesn’t let the people proceed without authentication, but once authenticated, they can easily access secure files that we’ve established, and they can easily save their own. They can also participate in secure distribution groups whose members are authorized to receive sensitive items. The Microsoft environment makes security a seamless process for us. Just the way it functions by design, without a lot of complicated setup, meets our security requirements really well.”

The new solution enables employees to log on only once per session, and their security authorization remains valid even when they access multiple systems (single sign-on technology). These systems contain secure files that remote employees need in order to complete a wide variety of tasks.

Easier Remote Access

More secure access to files makes working at home feasible. “We have about 100 people who work at home full time,” says Sparks. “They connect to our network using a secure VPN [virtual private network], which Windows Server and Exchange Server support very well. These employees provide labor without as much overhead. With GroupWise, we couldn’t consider such extensive remote-worker participation, because supporting those employees would have been too difficult.”

With their robust support for mobile devices and for add-in mobility solutions, Exchange Server and Windows Server help traveling workers, too. “We have given PCs to our ‘concurrent nurses’,” says Sparks. “We have nurses in the field accessing data wirelessly at near-broadband speeds and connecting to our enterprise resource-planning system back in the office. This is a huge productivity benefit for us and provides convenient healthcare to patients.”

Effective Employee Collaboration

Because the solution is easy to use, employees are rapidly embracing it and applying it in new ways to their daily work. “The Web mail capabilities of GroupWise were crude to the point of unusable,” says Sparks. “However, the interface of Outlook Web Access is simple, with a look and feel that employees already know from using Outlook on their desktops. Employees can access contacts, see past and future schedules, delegate tasks, and send task-related information. These tools are quickly becoming invaluable. With Exchange Server, people are beginning to think in terms of using their computers to collaborate. With GroupWise, people would read their e-mail, and that was basically all.”

“Employees are definitely collaborating better now,” adds Jewett. “For example, through Outlook, employees are more likely to conduct meetings, make presentations, and create media shows because scheduling them is so much easier—not just inviting attendees, but reserving physical resources like equipment and locations. Another example is that employees like being able to launch e-mail directly within other applications, which makes it easier to share documents. A third example is the ability to set up distribution lists, which is helpful in an environment like ours where teams constantly form and reform. Individually, these features are little things, but together, they add up to better productivity.”

Microsoft Windows Server System

Microsoft Windows Server System is a line of integrated and manageable server software designed to reduce the complexity and cost of IT. Windows Server System enables you to spend less time and budget on managing your systems so that you can focus your resources on other priorities for you and your business.

 

For more information about Windows Server System, go to:

windowsserversystem

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| |Software and Services

■ Microsoft Windows Server System

− Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise Edition

− Microsoft Office Project Server 2003

− Microsoft Operations Manager 2005

− Microsoft SQL Server 2005

− Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003

− Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition

■ Microsoft Office

− Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003

− Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003 |

− Microsoft Office Project Standard 2003

− Microsoft Office Outlook 2003

■ Windows Mobile

■ Windows XP

■ Technologies

− Active Directory

− Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer

− Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access

Hardware

■ HP ProLiant server computers

Partner

■ Horizons Consulting | |

© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Active Directory, Outlook, Windows, the Windows logo, Windows Mobile, Windows Server, and Windows Server System are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Document published May 2006 | | |

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers )*34>Q - 0 who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:

For more information about Horizons Consulting products and services, call (618) 498-6744 or visit the Web site at:

For more information about Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City products and services, call (816) 395-2222 or visit the Web site at:

Home/Home.asp

“We have nurses in the field accessing data wirelessly at near-broadband speeds and connecting to our enterprise resource planning system back in the office. This is a huge productivity benefit for us and provides convenient healthcare to patients.”

Kevin Sparks, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City

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“The Microsoft environment makes security a seamless process for us. Just the way it functions by design, without a lot of complicated setup, meets our security requirements really well.”

Linda Jewett, Senior Project Manager for IT, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City

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