Overview

Main Location: Knoxville, TN

Industry: Not-for-profit Helen  Ross  McNabb  Center  Case  Study  

Profile: A not-for-profit health care
provider located in East Tennessee. For over 60 years, the Helen Ross McNabb Center (HRMC) has provided social services
Business Challenge: Meeting regulatory and out-patient care to children, adults, and families for mental health and substance
requirements; protecting data from loss abuse. The Center offers these services to 17 East Tennessee counties from 29 distinct
or intrusion; lowering operating costs; locations. Hallmarks of the Center's work are compassion and confidentiality.
planning long-term IT strategy

Results:
 Reduction in hardware associated Business  Challenges    
energy, licensing, storage, and
Compassion and confidentiality have a price tag, however, especially in a continuously
management.
evolving health care context. As an expanding, not-for-profit entity, HRMC has struggled
 Enhanced security, system availability,
and backup with limited funds and resources, while facing increasing demands for IT sophistication and
 Accommodation of multiple legacy complexity to control costs and to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and
systems for streamlined business
processes Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA, Title II). The IT director at HRMC identified several
 Faster IT service for users through vulnerabilities for which they needed a solution:
automated provisioning
 Simplified network • Changing financial landscape in health care funding: The current debate
 More IT time freed up for strategic about health care reform in the United states has brought the cost and value of
planning both public and private health care under ever-increasing scrutiny. Health care
 A "greener" office environment
providers need to respond quickly to changes in public and private funding and in
 Self-monitoring systems for even
legislation covering the uninsured. They need to carefully track funding sources,
service wear
 Potential for fast expansion at low cost
client records, and donor accounts.
• Limited internal resources: The HRMC business model is to operate with highly
Technologies
qualified staff who can achieve goals with limited resources. The IT challenge has
been to offer systems that cut time-consuming tasks, ensure compliance, are

6426 Baum Dr.

Knoxville TN 37909

(865) 330 - 2323

Integracon sales@integracon.com
Integracon makes no warranties, express or implied, in this summary. Integracon is a Technologies

registered trademark. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein
1
may be the trademarks of their respective owners. www.Integracon.com
 relatively straightforward to use, and ensure long-term flexibility and
functionality.
• Limited IT budget: When "not for profit" follows the entity name, "limited
budget" is a given. HRMC had to consider whether to patch, retrofit, or
replace current computer equipment to meet current and growing needs.
• High demand for automation: With a variety of databases and applications
residing on different systems, HRMC faced an administration nightmare.
Administration costs were high jacking resources that could have gone to
patient care. HRMC faced replicating the same inefficient computer system
with new "boxes" and all the manual tasks associated with provisioning new
computers. They needed an automated system of provisioning new systems
and of replicating desktops.
• Organic IT growth from increased mergers and acquisitions: HRMC has
grown rapidly by combining with other entities, and in so doing, found itself
with a variety of incompatible business systems. These differences greatly
hampered everyday business tasks. HRMC's challenge was somehow to
marry legacy systems without losing data and functionality.
• Employee attrition: A trained and consistent workforce can "make do" for a
long time with a less-than-adequate IT infrastructure. With frequent employee
turnover, however, HRMC found that making do did not serve. Without
intuitive, fast, consistent systems, new personnel required special training,
lost time with redundant activities, and became discouraged with work
overload, all of which led to more attrition and the cycle continued.
• Slow time-to-market (TTM) efficiencies: From an IT perspective, slow TTM
of service is bad service. When new people come on board, they need PCs
functioning immediately. Getting them up and on line takes time--ordering
new machines and installing software or retrofitting old PCs to specifications,
ensuring correct security codes and access--the service list is long. For
HRMC, frequent changes in personnel increased the importance of TTM.
• HIPAA compliance: As with any entity that stores patient data in the United
States, HRMC has to meet national standards ensuring the confidentiality,
integrity, and availability of all Electronic Protected Health Care Information
(EPHI) that it creates, receives, manages, and transmits to other entities,
regardless of medium—portable devices, external systems, or hardware,
owned or not owned by HRMC. In addition, they have to ensure workforce
compliance with HIPAA. How to do all this efficiently, securely, and for the
long term? This challenge was a show-stopper without an advanced IT
solution.

2
www.Integracon.com
Technical  Response  
HRMC transformed their IT capabilities by electing to use virtualization, or virtual
machines (VM), on a desktop server. With the specific elements listed below,
HRMC achieved a new level of performance for many years to come.

Elements  in  HRMC's  Virtual  Environment  

CX4-120 EMC Storage Area Network (SAN) Fiber for lowest cost of ownership

 Appropriate for mid-sized corporations that need entry-level networked

storage
 Capable of twice the workload in a single system vs. that offered by
other competing storage providers
 Virtual provisioning, which allows users to reduce initial capacity
requirements, run systems at higher utilization rates, add capacity as
needed without application disruption, accelerate and simplify
processes, and deliver just-in-time capacity planning
 Multi-core processors and 64-bit operating system
 Future memory scalability from 5 to 120 terabytes (TB) of data
 UltraFlexTM technology, which provides dual-protocol, online-expandable
connectivity options and the ability to integrate future technologies
 EMC PowerPath and advanced CX4 functionality, which protect data
from unexpected events and decrease energy use
 Powered by Intel Xeon processors
 Pre-configured with Fibre Channel and iSCSI connectivity, allowing
individual choice of the best connectivity for specific applications
• Flash drives that extend storage tiering capabilities across all drive types
to improve capacity utilization beyond typical Fibre Channel drives; more
reliable with no moving parts and faster RAID rebuilds
• Low power SATA II drives for highest density, lowest cost, and 96% less
energy per terabyte than 15K rpm Fibre Channel drives and 32 percent
less than traditional 7.2K rpm 1 TB SATA drives
• Adaptive cooling for increased energy efficiency based on system
activity
• Drive spin-down policy capability set at the RAID group level to put
inactive drives into sleep mode to save power

Brocade Fiber Channel Switch, which allows for many-to-many communication,

device name lookup, security, and redundancy and provides integration of the
Brocade fabric into the BladeCenter architecture

3
www.Integracon.com
VMWare Enterprise 4, which delivers desktops as a managed service from a
virtualization platform that delivers the entire desktop, not just applications;
allows consolidated virtual desktops on datacenter servers; independent
management of operating systems, applications, and data for business agility;
and a flexible, familiar, high performance desktop experience for end users over
any network

Cisco 3750 Gigabit Switches, a compatible, built-in switch that works with other
network devices in the organization's infrastructure; improves LAN operations by
combining ease of use and the highest available resiliency for stackable
switches

Wyse V90 and S10 Thin Clients, a unit that is solid state (and therefore runs
cool and quietly), small, lightweight with inherent security, peripheral
connectivity, and powerful enough to run local applications; energy efficient;
equipped with USB ports, remote management, simple device setup, and
imaging.

Successful  Results  
Before moving to VM, HRMC ran all their business applications on dedicated
servers that required expensive physical space, ran even when applications
were idle, and needed individual backup and management.

With VM, they

• Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) by replacing all their servers

with one desktop computer; reducing the number of servers required
for future expansion and associated cost of software licensing;
eliminating need for additional computing space, cooling systems,
energy, and management oversight
• Created a robust backup for data and ensured continuous system
availability with no or little downtime for a high level of business
continuity
• Eliminated the complexity of multiple legacy systems on different
platforms
• Automated individual steps in end-to-end storage provisioning, which
allows best practice rules for automatic zoning, device configuration,
and path selection, all of which lowers administration costs, increases
responsiveness to business requirements, and increases the
availability of applications

4
www.Integracon.com
 • Simplified the network
• Increased security and total system backup
• Increased the life expectancy of equipment through the system's
ability to sense when one part is underutilized and redistribute
service evenly
• Freed up IT and staff time
• Achieved a "greener" office environment
• Allowed for faster expansion

Working  with  Integracon    

HRMC enjoyed a successful partnership with Integracon, a company that
takes service to a new level. After a thorough analysis of business objectives,
Integracon scoped out a technical solution that fit HRMC's size and budget.
As they have for other service entities, Integracon helped steer HRMC toward
a source that sold VM equipment at greatly reduced prices. After the
instillation was fully tested, Integracon has provided tech support that is
personal, local, and 24/7.

5
www.Integracon.com