The Challenge

The shared IT infrastructure was a combination of two “hand-me-down” physical servers and several temporary, but innovative work-a-rounds. Rudimentary at best, it was prone to ongoing maintenance issues and was a constant cause of concern.

During that time, management of IT and communications at Golden Bay was time consuming, resource heavy and very expensive. Unreliable connectivity ruled out remote management and significant issues with failures and outages meant a “hands on” approach to troubleshooting and day-to-day maintenance. Site visits and the inherent cost of travel and overnight accommodation, often equated to exorbitant costs that stretched NBPH’s IT budget. More importantly, any significant outage also had a direct impact on the provision of health care services to patients.

The Integration of three facilities, Golden Bay Community Hospital, Golden Bay Medical Centre and The Joan Whiting Rest Home in Collingwood and the assurance of business continuity was the catalyst for the planning, implementation and provision of a robust IT solution at Golden Bay.

The Solution

To meet all the challenges, the solution that was implemented needed to be built around a much improved and more resilient network. As soon as possible, ADSL was upgraded to a dedicated fibre connection and became the primary NBPH WAN connection.

The new IT infrastructure could now be developed around a highly available virtualisation platform. This meant essential services could be run across the WAN from Nelson and there was no longer a requirement to replicate all services from our Nelson site to Golden Bay. Key services such as email are now run across the WAN from Nelson. There are significant cost savings in not having to replicate services at each site.

The visibility of all servers across the WAN also meant a huge jump in remote management and independence for the NBPH IT team. This has meant significant cost savings in outsourced engineering hours leaving further investment opportunities for ongoing improvements and enhancements to the system.

Another key component of the solution was the decision to use a Remote Desktop Services platform to support a more mobile working style and multiuser environment. Given the requirements at this site for Health Practitioners to move between consult rooms, leveraging this technology allows staff to move between rooms without having to worry about local profiles or applications being set up.

Business Results and Benefits

The solution envisioned and implemented has met all expectations and has contributed immensely to the success of the Golden Bay Integrated Family Health Centre Project.

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The Challenge

CCL was one of the first technology suppliers in New Zealand to identify demand for infrastructure and desktops to be provided ‘as a service’. “Our customers were telling us they had too many skilled people managing desktops and servers rather than spending time on business projects that could grow revenue or open new markets,” said Alan Leigh, Director, CCL. “We recognised that we could offer standardised cloud services that could meet their needs.”

When researching how to deliver these services, CCL realised it needed a flexible datacentre platform that could scale to support multiple customers and deliver a range of infrastructure, networking and storage options to each. “‘As a service’ offerings are extremely complex to develop,” said Leigh. “It involves turning multiple technology products and operational support services into a standardised offering that meets most client requirements. That’s a very different challenge to creating a one-off product for a single client.”

The Solution

CCL reviewed numerous options, but realised VMware was the only vendor it could rely on to provide the underlying technology it needed for its Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solution.

“The IaaS solution was one of our most important product launches ever, so there was a lot riding on our choice

of technology,” said Leigh. “VMware’s market leadership and proven track record made it the ideal partner and the flexibility and scalability of VMware vSphere® met all our needs for the service.”

CCL launched the IaaS solution in 2010, receiving an immediate and positive response from customers. The company later implemented VMware vCloud® Suite to expand its operations management, infrastructure services provisioning,

and business continuity, security and IT services control capabilities.

CCL also began working on a complementary Desktop as a Service (DaaS) solution based on the VMware Horizon™ Suite, which it launched in 2012. While CCL had used VMware desktop virtualization products internally for several years, it considered a range of products before committing to VMware Horizon Suite. “Our Chief Technology Officer reviewed the core capabilities and pricing of all the products we looked at, and we were particularly impressed by VMware’s end-user computing capability and roadmap,” said Leigh. “Also, by centralising its management toolsets, VMware had made it very easy to complete the operational tasks involved in managing the DaaS.”

The introduction of CCL’s pioneering desktop service allowed New Zealand organisations to access a true, enterprise- grade DaaS at a highly competitive rate that included operational support. This was a major change for many clients that had used traditional managed desktop solutions from competitors and endured high support costs.

CCL’s service allows organisations to gain extensive efficiencies by undertaking centralised management of ‘fat client’ and virtual desktops from a single console. In addition, the service has made it easy for customers to let employees access corporate desktops and applications via their personal tablets and smart phones.

CCL was particularly pleased with the support it received from VMware when it developed the DaaS solution. “VMware worked with us to understand what

we were attempting to do and to lend assistance from a commercial and a support perspective,” said Leigh. “We’re continuing to collaborate with their Asia Pacific and global product specialists.”

Business Results and Benefits

CCL’s bold move to provide infrastructure and desktops as a service is delivering strong results. The IaaS solution is supporting 4,000 virtual machines and

4 petabytes of storage for 70 customers, while the relatively new DaaS solution is already supporting 8,000 seats at large- and medium-sized organisations.

Christchurch City Council and multinational beef and lamb marketer ANZCO Foods are two prominent organisations that are using CCL’s services to save money, become more efficient and enable key staff to focus on innovation.

The council became CCL’s foundation enterprise IaaS client when it outsourced its infrastructure to the provider in 2010. The council calculates that the deal will save about NZ$3.5 million over five years, while supporting anticipated strong growth in demand for capacity.

Applications are running much faster on CCL’s IaaS than on the council’s internal systems. For example, a rates processing function that previously took five hours to complete can now be finished in two.

ANZCO is taking advantage of CCL’s infrastructure and desktop services. The food marketer is benefiting from a set price per desktop which includes desktop hardware, imaging, patching, monitoring and management, service desk support and application management. Change management is quick and easy—a considerable improvement over

ANZCO’s previous ‘locked down’ desktop environment which made it hard and expensive to complete tasks such as adding new applications to the desktops of particular user groups.

By moving to a cloud-based service, ANZCO has cut its total cost of ownership as well as its service delivery and support requirements. In the event of a disaster, key systems can be recovered in hours, minimising disruption to the company, its customers and its partners.

According to Leigh, CCL has a healthy pipeline of potential clients for the IaaS and DaaS solutions which are delivered from its datacentre as well as its on-client-premise DaaS product. The successful launch of the solutions has also convinced him that CCL made the right choice in selecting VMware’s technologies. “In the VMware Horizon Suite, VMware vSphere and VMware

vCloud Suite, they’ve got great products that lend themselves to fantastic, mature ‘as a service’ offerings,” he said.

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