Alchemy Group » BVA http://www.alchemygroupinc.com Accelerating Corporate Performance Fri, 04 May 2012 18:39:35 +0000 en hourly 1 Storage and Availability Management, Backup and Recovery, Endpoint Security, and Security Management http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2011/12/storage-and-availability-management-backup-and-recovery-endpoint-security-and-security-management/ http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2011/12/storage-and-availability-management-backup-and-recovery-endpoint-security-and-security-management/#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:51:09 +0000 admin http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/?p=1299 Overview
Thai Airways International Public Company Limited (THAI) is the national carrier of the Kingdom of Thailand. Founded in 1960, the airline operates domestic, regional, and intercontinental flights from its home base in Bangkok. It transports passengers, cargo, and mail on regularly scheduled and chartered flights.
Barriers
To comply with the company’s strategic plan, the information technology (IT) organization was challenged to operate in a cost-efficient, productive manner, and to support the enterprise in its efforts to reduce operating expenses while maintaining customer safety and satisfaction. Specifically, it needed to be responsive to the dynamic needs of the business, adapt to rapid data growth, increase labor productivity, drive down costs, and reduce risks. Additionally, tools were required to support high application availability, server virtualization, streamlined backups and updates, and improved security reporting.
Solution
To meet these challenges, THAI consolidated on the following Symantec products between 2005 and 2011: Symantec NetBackup to expedite backup and recovery processes, improve backup success rates, and enable data deduplication; Veritas Cluster Server to resolve application availability issues; Veritas Storage Foundation HA to centralize and streamline storage management; Symantec Endpoint Protection to reduce exposure to security risks including viruses, malware, and intrusions; and Symantec Security Information Manager to prioritize and improve threat response.
Benefits
A Total Operational and Economic Impact (TOEI®) analysis by Alchemy Group, Inc. found that Symantec solutions delivered significant operational and economic benefits to THAI. By automating labor-intensive tasks and providing better analysis tools, the Symantec solutions and associated process improvements dramatically reduced the time that IT staff spent on system management and key security activities,
improved availability for end users, and reduced storage costs. Actual and projected savings of nearly $3.3 million are quantified for the period of January 2005 through December 2013 (all savings are expressed in U.S. dollars).

For more information or to download this document, go to http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/category/research/bva/

]]> http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2011/12/storage-and-availability-management-backup-and-recovery-endpoint-security-and-security-management/feed/ 0 The Operational and Economic Impact of Green IT http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2011/12/the-operational-and-economic-impact-of-green-it/ http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2011/12/the-operational-and-economic-impact-of-green-it/#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:47:10 +0000 admin http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/?p=1294 Overview
Symantec is a global leader in infrastructure software, providing security, storage, and systems management solutions to help consumers and organizations secure and manage their information-driven world. The company enables its customers to protect their infrastructure, information, and interactions by delivering software and services that address risks to security, availability, compliance, and performance. Headquartered in Mountain View, California and operating in more than 40 countries, Symantec had revenues of $6.01 billion in fiscal year 2010.

The company is experiencing steady business growth, both organically and through mergers and acquisitions. In particular, the growing interest in cloud computing and hosted IT services is escalating the demands on Symantec’s data center infrastructure to accommodate those services. Simultaneously, the company is inheriting the real estate holdings of acquired businesses as it continues to manage the impact of its carbon footprint on the environment. Symantec’s software-based approach to green IT offers organizations various tools for streamlining the IT infrastructure and driving energy efficiencies to reduce energy costs. In addition, the company’s longstanding commitment to environmental stewardship is spurring actions on other fronts including facilities consolidation and travel reduction to help Symantec achieve its green objectives.
Barriers
Symantec has endeavored to balance growth in its facilities, application hosting, and data storage services with the mission to contain its global energy consumption. Efforts to find the balance between corporate growth and reducing overall carbon dioxide emissions continue to evolve.
The Solution
Seeking operational efficiencies and lower costs, Symantec implemented a series of steps that leveraged a number of its own data management technologies. The company began consolidating its data centers worldwide to achieve significant savings in facilities and data center operations. The IT infrastructure team harnessed virtualization technologies to manage server growth and related energy consumption. To reduce its data storage footprint the company leveraged Symantec NetBackup and NetBackup PureDisk for data deduplication; Symantec Enterprise Vault for single-instance email archiving; and Veritas Storage Foundation and Veritas CommandCentral for optimal storage utilization. In addition, Symantec also deployed a custom power management profile on company PCs to eliminate energy waste from unused devices.
Benefits
As a result of its ongoing green IT efforts, Symantec is achieving substantial operational and economic benefit. Alchemy Group conducted a TOEI™ analysis and projected IT-related business value totaling more than $19.5 million between July 2007 and December 2012, in addition to $959,000 in facilities energy savings from fiscal year 2008 to fiscal year 2010 (Chart 1).

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]]> http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2011/12/the-operational-and-economic-impact-of-green-it/feed/ 0 Information Security, Endpoint Protection, Threat Readiness, and Data Loss Prevention http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2011/12/information-security-endpoint-protection-threat-readiness-and-data-loss-prevention/ http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2011/12/information-security-endpoint-protection-threat-readiness-and-data-loss-prevention/#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:42:43 +0000 admin http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/?p=1289 Overview
Barnabas Health is New Jersey’s largest integrated healthcare delivery system and the second largest private employer in the state. With more than 19,600 employees, 4,750 physicians (one-fourth of the state’s practicing physicians), and 450 medical residents in 19 approved residency programs, Barnabas Health provides treatment and services for more than two million patients each year. The award-winning Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey—one of 11 hospitals in the system—is the state’s oldest and largest nonprofit, nonsectarian hospital.
Barriers
Like other healthcare providers, Barnabas Health faced a significant challenge: the need to secure and manage large amounts of mission-critical and highly sensitive electronic data. With its medical staff focused on patient care at the front end, the Barnabas Health information technology (IT) security team had to ensure the organization’s health in the backend environment. The team needed to secure and
protect the healthcare system’s critical data while achieving regulatory compliance, eliminating risks to information, and reducing the time and cost of executing all of the institution’s day-to-day processes.
The Solution
With patient care as the mandate and the driver across the entire organization, the Barnabas Health IT security team undertook a series of software implementations to ensure that the healthcare system’s information security needs were met on an ongoing basis. The team deployed Symantec solutions to address endpoint security (Symantec Endpoint Protection), data loss prevention (Symantec Data Loss Prevention), and threat response and readiness (Symantec Security Information Manager and DeepSight Threat Management System). Barnabas Health also engaged Symantec Business Critical Services for a number of these software implementations.
Benefits
A Total Operational and Economic Impact (TOEI®) analysis by Alchemy Group, Inc. found that Symantec solutions delivered significant operational and economic benefits to Barnabas Health. By automating labor-intensive tasks and providing better analysis tools, the Symantec solutions and associated process improvements dramatically reduced the time that IT staff spent on security activities. Actual and projected
savings of more than $2.7 million are quantified for the period of January 2008 through December 2012.

For more information or to download this document, go to http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/category/research/bva/

]]> http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2011/12/information-security-endpoint-protection-threat-readiness-and-data-loss-prevention/feed/ 0 Centralized Security Management, Data Loss Prevention, and Endpoint Protection http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2011/12/centralized-security-management-data-loss-prevention-and-endpoint-protection/ http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2011/12/centralized-security-management-data-loss-prevention-and-endpoint-protection/#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:49:11 +0000 admin http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/?p=1282 Overview
Presbyterian Healthcare Services (PHS) is a system of nonprofit hospitals, which, along with the for-profit Presbyterian Healthcare Plan, creates an integrated healthcare system. For more than 100 years, PHS has been committed to a single purpose: improving the health of individuals, families, and communities throughout New Mexico. PHS reinvests the entire margin it earns into better healthcare for New Mexico, and it has reinvested more than $350 million into local healthcare since 2006. PHS employs nearly 10,000 doctors, nurses, and staff members in its numerous hospitals and clinics and insures more than 600,000 individuals—about one in three New Mexicans—every year. PHS is New Mexico’s largest employer.
Barriers
Due to the nature of its business, PHS requires faultless continuity of systems and strict adherence to industry standards for healthcare operations. In particular, PHS was subject to information security regulations for electronic records (including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA). Its information technology (IT) environment was broad and diverse, with multiple platforms and both physical and virtual servers. Its legacy security systems did not have the capabilities to identify the need for security patch updates nor could they detect or prevent incidents of improper use of patient
information. As a result, PHS needed to rely upon an honor system among its employees to stay within compliance, and this made it virtually impossible to document compliance for auditors. Finally, the lack of an integrated security solution meant that the IT department conducted reactive, high-touch incident response, requiring up to 10 days to analyze, confirm, and remediate a single incident. IT lacked the automated identification and remote management capabilities to handle an incident in a low-touch way.
The Solution
In July 2009, PHS underwent a 14-month migration to an integrated set of Symantec solutions for incident visibility, response, and management. This included Symantec Data Loss Prevention to monitor and enforce policies for the use of confidential information; the Arellia Application Control Solution on the Symantec Management Platform for secure application usage; Symantec Endpoint Protection to provide comprehensive security for servers, workstations, and laptops; Symantec Security Information Manager to correlate, prioritize, and manage security events; and Symantec Control Compliance Suite to automate compliance reporting and policy management. PHS IT specialists worked alongside Symantec Consulting Services during implementation, enabling rapid knowledge transfer with continuous operations of mission-critical systems.
Benefits
A TOEI® analysis by Alchemy Group found that Symantec solutions delivered significant operational and economic benefits by automating labor-intensive tasks and providing better analysis tools. The Symantec solutions and associated process improvements reduced the time that IT staff and end users spent on key security and compliance activities. The resources gained were redeployed to other IT business-critical areas. Actual and projected savings of more than $800,000 were identified for the period from January 2010 through December 2012.

For more information or to download this document, go to http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/category/research/bva/

]]> http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2011/12/centralized-security-management-data-loss-prevention-and-endpoint-protection/feed/ 0 Asset Management, Client Management, Endpoint Security, Service Desk, and Workflow Management http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2011/12/asset-management-client-management-endpoint-security-service-desk-and-workflow-management/ http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2011/12/asset-management-client-management-endpoint-security-service-desk-and-workflow-management/#comments Sun, 04 Dec 2011 23:08:41 +0000 admin http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/?p=1275 Overview
beCogent Ltd. provides call center and help desk services to a wide range of companies, including Virgin Media, JD Williams, John Lewis Direct, and House of Fraser. The company is headquartered in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire, Scotland, and has call centers in Glasgow, Erskine, and Kilmarnock.
Barriers
Rapid growth was straining beCogent’s infrastructure, forcing the company to consider upgrades. beCogent also set a goal of achieving Level 1 compliance with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard, which would be a first for a United Kingdom outsourcing company and touch on information technology (IT) in a number of ways. A primary need was to upgrade patches at 2,500 endpoints and 130 servers, a task made harder by the lack of an accurate inventory of software and hardware assets. In addition, since so many IT processes were manual, a major patching project threatened to consume substantial IT resources and negatively impact customer service.
The Solution
beCogent turned to Symantec software and Symantec services to drive the needed IT transformation. Altiris IT Management Suite allowed the IT staff to track assets, such as software licenses and equipment leases, and to maximize beCogent’s investments. Symantec ServiceDesk is driving new levels of customer service, enhancing the productivity of help desk staff, and providing timely information about service levels and staffing requirements. The combination of these software solutions has helped beCogent achieve its goal of PCI compliance.
Benefits
TOEI™ analysis by Alchemy Group found that Symantec software (Altiris Asset Management Suite, Altiris Client Management Suite, and Symantec Endpoint Protection) delivered actual and projected savings of $678,481 for the period from September 2009 through December 2011. This TOEI was jointly developed by senior beCogent IT staff and Alchemy Group. To ensure the integrity of this analysis, the assumptions and formulas were audited by an independent finance and accounting firm (all savings are expressed in U.S. dollars1).

For more information or to download this document, go to http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/category/research/bva/

]]> http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2011/12/asset-management-client-management-endpoint-security-service-desk-and-workflow-management/feed/ 0 Content Archiving, Endpoint Security, Messaging Security http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2010/12/content-archiving-endpoint-security-messaging-security/ http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2010/12/content-archiving-endpoint-security-messaging-security/#comments Tue, 07 Dec 2010 05:38:14 +0000 admin http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/?p=1123 Overview
BDO Israel is a dynamic and performance-driven accounting and consulting firm. It is part of the BDO international network that reaches more than 110 countries. Ranked among the five leading industry firms in Israel, BDO Israel provides audit and accounting, tax, and business consulting services to industry and government. Established in 1983, the firm currently employs approximately 1,050 people spanning six branches in Israel, satellite offices in India and China, and an accounting office in the country of Georgia.

Barriers
The nature of BDO Israel’s business requires the highest level of security in its fixed and mobile environments, faultless business continuity, and efficient document storage and retrieval—all of which it achieved with information technology (IT) upgrades. Because of its lean IT operation, the firm needed to migrate from high-touch legacy systems to a single automated system that was unfailingly reliable. The system also had to drive down server space requirements to manage a mounting cache of structured documents and to contend with email usage that was growing by 20 percent annually. The company had about 25 terabytes of capacity across 75 servers, but free space was disappearing rapidly. BDO Israel recognized that highly efficient IT management was needed to avoid having to purchase new servers year after year.

The Solution
In 2006, BDO Israel began a four-year migration to an integrated suite of Symantec solutions that included Symantec Enterprise Vault as well as to several endpoint and security solutions, including Symantec Endpoint Protection, Symantec Brightmail Gateway appliances, and Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery. In 2010, it brought all of those endpoint and security solutions under the umbrella of Symantec Protection Suite Enterprise Edition.

BDO Israel also contracted with Symantec Consulting Services to assist with initial architecture design. Symantec Partners Virgonet Israel and GlassHouse Technologies provided implementation and integration support for Symantec Enterprise Vault. BDO Israel manages the IT infrastructure with a lean staff of outsourced employees who work under the direction of Chief Information Officer (CIO) Itzik Ben-Ezri.

Benefits
Alchemy Group conducted a Total Operational and Economic Impact (TOEI™) analysis of BDO Israel, and concluded that the company realized tangible business value using Symantec solutions. Actual and projected savings totaled nearly $1.12 million for the period from August 2006 through December 2012.
This TOEI™ was jointly developed by BDO Israel’s CIO and Alchemy Group. To ensure the integrity of this analysis, the assumptions and formulas were audited by an independent finance and accounting firm.

For more information or to download this document, go to  http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/category/research/bva/

]]> http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2010/12/content-archiving-endpoint-security-messaging-security/feed/ 0 Email Archiving and e-Discovery, Multi-tier Security Architecture, and Server Reimaging http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2010/12/email-archiving-and-e-discovery-multi-tier-security-architecture-and-server-reimaging/ http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2010/12/email-archiving-and-e-discovery-multi-tier-security-architecture-and-server-reimaging/#comments Mon, 06 Dec 2010 02:58:04 +0000 admin http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/?p=1119 Overview
Fulton County, formed in 1853 and merged with two other counties in 1932, encompasses 534 square miles and stretches 70 miles in length from its northern-most point to its southern-most point. It includes 11 cities, including the city of Atlanta. The county’s 7,000 employees deliver services that support a citizenry of approximately 915,000 residents. Since the arrival of CIO Robert Taylor in 2000, the Fulton County IT department has distinguished itself for technology innovation.

Challenges
In 2001, when the Nimda worm crippled Fulton County’s computing environment for nearly six months, costing the county approximately $1 million in remediation costs, Taylor and his team embarked on a search to design and implement a multi-tier security infrastructure. Then, when Fulton County lost more than four months of email in August 2003, Taylor and his team recognized the need to overhaul the county’s enterprise messaging infrastructure. A contributing factor was the need to reduce costs through email archiving and e-discovery to meet open records as well as email restore requests. The county also sought a way to provide archiving, search, and retrieval of fax and voicemail, both of which fall under the Georgia Open Records Act.

Concurrent with the security initiative, Taylor and his team rolled out a next-generation multi-tier storage infrastructure based on EMC storage systems. The business continuity solution provides a cost-effective, fully redundant infrastructure that has been acknowledged as a best-in-class solution by the National Association of Counties (NACo) and various other entities. As part of its larger business continuity initiative, Taylor and CTO Terry Gates determined that a reimaging solution for data center servers was needed; with 255 facilities spread across the county, the IT team needed the ability to perform remote server rebuilds.

Solution
Symantec AntiVirus Enterprise Edition is a core component of the multi-tier security infrastructure that Fulton County rolled out in December 2001. The solution includes Symantec LiveUpdate for automated patch updates. For enterprise messaging management, Fulton County, one of the first adopters of the technology, deployed Symantec Enterprise Vault (formerly KVS Enterprise Vault) in March 2004. Symantec Consulting Services provided implementation assistance (over one weekend). Seeking enhanced e-discovery functionality, Taylor and his team added the Discovery Accelerator option in October 2005. At the same time, Fulton County extended archiving and e-discovery for internet faxing and Voice over IP (VoIP). For server reimaging Fulton County rolled out Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery in December 2005.

Benefits
Fulton County is realizing significant business value in three areas: email, internet faxing, and VoIP archiving and e-discovery; security; and server reimaging. The archiving components—both for fulfilling open records requests and providing end users with self-restore capabilities—is producing $1,639,000 in cost savings and cost avoidance over a period of approximately 3 1⁄2 years. Cost avoidance associated with remediation of security breaches, with one intrusion annually, equates to $2,850,000 from January 2001 to December 2006. The business value extends to the server reimaging solution as well, with $37,000 in savings projected from April 2005 to December 2007.

For more information or to download this document, go to http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/category/research/bva/

]]> http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2010/12/email-archiving-and-e-discovery-multi-tier-security-architecture-and-server-reimaging/feed/ 0 Message Management, Email Archiving and e-Discovery, and Endpoint Protection http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2010/11/message-management-email-archiving-and-e-discovery-and-endpoint-protection/ http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2010/11/message-management-email-archiving-and-e-discovery-and-endpoint-protection/#comments Tue, 30 Nov 2010 04:43:34 +0000 admin http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/?p=1077 Overview
Media General, Inc. is a multimedia company based in the Southeast with roots that go back more than 150 years. Its business consists of TV stations, newspapers, and an interactive division that provides web site services for its TV stations and newspapers, as well as online interactive advertising and marketing solutions. Its marquee properties include the largest daily newspapers in Richmond, Winston-Salem, and Tampa.

Barriers
The introduction of instant messaging (IM) in 2001 brought new security risks, such as IM-borne malware and the need to limit its use to authorized employees. In 2006, Media General sought a new email archiving solution to address compliance requirements and improve productivity when fulfilling e-discovery requests. Mailbox size limits were hindering end-user productivity, and the cost of storing emails on Microsoft Exchange servers was prohibitive. In 2007, faced with an influx in malware and spyware intrusions, the company’s IT department initiated a search to replace the current antivirus program with a more comprehensive endpoint security solution.

The Solution
Media General’s introduction to Symantec products occurred in 2001, when Symantec IM Manager was deployed. IM Manager allowed control over who could install instant messaging and effectively blocked any viruses and malware from spreading through instant messaging. In 2006, the company integrated two Symantec Mail Security 8160 appliances into its email environment to filter incoming mail and provide better management of its Microsoft Exchange environment.

Also in 2006, Media General rolled out Symantec Enterprise Vault to its legal and management staff, with the deployment including PST Migrator, Offline Vault, and Discovery Accelerator. Symantec Consulting Services provided implementation assistance. Recently, the company migrated from Trend Micro AntiVirus software to Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0. The new solution provides antivirus and antispyware protection, a desktop firewall, intrusion prevention, and device control for Media General’s endpoints. The optional remote administration console capabilities of Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0 gives the Media General IT team the ability to monitor and control the installations from a central console.

Benefits
The technology solutions from Symantec are producing tangible business value for Media General. The Alchemy Solutions Group conducted a Total Operational and Economic Impact (TOEITM) analysis of the solutions and quantified realized and projected business value from October 2006 through December 2009 in the following areas:
• Spam Elimination: $2,439,888 in recovered employee productivity, and another $12,060 in reduced IT labor costs with the deployment of two Symantec Mail Security 8160 appliances
• Storage Space Reduction: $1,386,630 in reduced storage costs due to spam email filtered by the Symantec Mail Security 8160 appliances
• Compression of Archived Emails: $15,020 savings in storage space with the deployment of Symantec Enterprise Vault
• e-Discovery Savings: $4,639 in IT cost savings and another $15,081 in recovered employee productivity using Discovery Accelerator
• Endpoint Protection Threat Reduction: $19,482 in IT staff productivity gains through streamlined security management

For more information or to download this document, go to http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/category/research/bva/

]]> http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2010/11/message-management-email-archiving-and-e-discovery-and-endpoint-protection/feed/ 0 Server and Data Storage Migration http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2010/11/server-and-data-storage-migration/ http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2010/11/server-and-data-storage-migration/#comments Tue, 30 Nov 2010 04:37:04 +0000 admin http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/?p=1072 Entertainment Partners is the largest outsourcing provider of payroll, budgeting, and production scheduling services within the entertainment industry. With over 27 years of experience, Entertainment Partners owns the majority marketshare of the production outsourcing services marketplace and has helped clients deliver large production projects on time and under budget. With the profitability of movies depending upon accurate production schedules and cost management, Entertainment Partners is “always in the picture.”

The Challenge
Entertainment Partners business model has changed dramatically over the last 10 years in an effort to support the information and business growth requirements of the entertainment industry. To begin, faced with exponential data storage growth, Entertainment Partners needed to scale data storage capacities to meet the business needs of existing entertainment customers. Second, to stay competitive within the entertainment marketplace, Entertainment Partners needed to improve its competitive position by developing a rapid deployment capability for new Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) applications. Third, Entertainment Partners sought to reduce its IT operating costs and avoid costs associated with additional IT infrastructure and personnel costs.

Barriers
Barriers to these three strategic initiatives included: a heterogeneous server environment based on a proprietary UNIX operating system, obsolete direct attached storage (DAS) disk-based architecture not capable of supporting future data storage needs in a cost-effective manner, and an existing Informix Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) lacking in functionality and pending end of life by IBM.

The Solution
Entertainment Partners’ relationship with Symantec Corporation (formerly VERITAS Software) dates back to the mid 1990s, when it implemented Veritas NetBackup and Veritas Storage Foundation software. In late 2001, seeking to embark on its migration to a next-generation datacenter architecture, the entertainment leader leveraged Portable Data Containers in Storage Foundation software to migrate to a robust Storage Area Network (SAN) environment based on a Hitachi Data System Lightning 9900V series system. The company subsequently added a Hitachi Thunder 9500V series system. In late 2004, Entertainment Partners initiated a process to migrate varied applications residing on a legacy Sequent NUMA-Q architecture to IBM xSeries servers running the Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise 9.0 operating system. The migration was streamlined—with no interruptions to operations or the production environment—using Veritas Storage Foundation for Linux.

Summary of Benefits
The datacenter and data protection solutions from Symantec produced tangible business value for Entertainment Partners. The business value breaks into four areas:
• Eliminated Disk Outages: Through the elimination of disk outages impacting front office productivity and system administrator maintenance time, Entertainment Partners is saving an estimated US$728,000 over three years.
• Reduced QA Time: The ability to test over 835 accounting and payroll applications in a fully functional mirrored production environment reduced QA test time by 50%, thus resulting in an estimated savings of US$337,000 from years 2005 through 2007.
• Increased Productivity: The migration to the new IBM xSeries server environment increased system administrator productivity by 60%, thereby producing a savings of US$601,000 from years 2005 through 2007.
• Reduced Total Cost of Ownership: Migration to the new IBM xSeries® server environment provided a 35% decrease in facility, maintenance, and operating costs, with an annual total cost of savings (TCO) impact of US$344,000 from years 2005 through 2007.

For more information or to download this document, go to http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/category/research/bva/

]]> http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2010/11/server-and-data-storage-migration/feed/ 0 Standardized Backup and Recovery, IT Compliance, High Availability and Application Management http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2010/11/standardized-backup-and-recovery-it-compliance-high-availability-and-application-management/ http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/2010/11/standardized-backup-and-recovery-it-compliance-high-availability-and-application-management/#comments Tue, 30 Nov 2010 04:32:59 +0000 admin http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/?p=1068 Overview
Baptist Health South Florida (Baptist Health), the region’s largest non-profit healthcare organization, has an outstanding reputation for medical care and service excellence. It serves the healthcare needs of approximately 100,000 patients annually at six acute care facilities and 13 outpatient urgent care and diagnostic centers.

With a culture centered on quality and patient safety, the faith-based organization is committed to maintaining the highest standards of clinical and service excellence. To achieve its vision to be the preeminent healthcare provider in the communities it serves, Baptist Health invests in its people and technology to increase efficiencies and ensure continuous improvement. In recognition of its progressive use of information technology, Baptist Health has been named one of the “100 Most Wired Hospitals and Health Systems” by Hospital & Health Networks magazine for six of the past eight years.

Barriers
Business excellence from the information technology (IT) perspective involves ensuring business continuity, data and system security, and reporting timeliness and accuracy despite rapid growth and aggressive expansion plans of the healthcare organization. Baptist Health’s IT department was challenged with a heterogeneous technology infrastructure that was unable to adequately scale to new business demands. In addition, many systems and practices in place were inefficient, and the IT organization needed to make more effective use of its time.

The Solution
In order to overcome its system and organizational issues, Baptist Health leverages various Symantec technologies and services. The technology solutions cover backup and recovery, monitoring and remediation, quality assurance, and compliance management. The different solutions from Symantec include Veritas NetBackup, Veritas Cluster Server, Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery, Symantec Control Compliance Suite, Symantec Security Information Manager, and Wise Package Studio from Altiris. Symantec Consulting Services played a key role in helping to deploy Symantec Security Information Manager and upgrade to the latest release of Symantec Control Compliance Suite.

Benefits
Baptist Health is achieving substantial business value as a result of its relationship with Symantec. A Total Operational and Economic (TOEI™) analysis by The Alchemy Solutions Group identified quantified metrics in the following areas:
• Labor Cost Avoidance with Centralized Backup Solution: $632,388 in labor savings with Veritas NetBackup
• Application Remediation Savings: $1,533,237 in labor savings leveraging the Wise Package Studio from Altiris
• Server Crash and DR Savings and Cost Avoidance: $29,654,310 in labor savings from deploying Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery in combination with VMware ESX Server
• Tiered Storage Cost Savings and Avoidance: $774,900 in storage savings with a tiered-storage structure that leverages Veritas NetBackup
• Physical-to-Virtual DR: $646,500 in migration savings with Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery and VMware ESX Server for P2V DR
• Compliance Management Efficiencies: $504,201 in labor savings from implementing Symantec Control Compliance Suite
• Security Management Efficiencies: $1,858,154 in labor savings by deploying Symantec Security Information Manager

For more information on Alchemy Group or to download this document, go to http://www.alchemygroupinc.com/category/research/bva/

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