ManageSoft® implementation earns Sisters of Mercy
Health System "InfoWorld 100" honors for innovative
corporate IT solutions for 2005
Deployment of ManageSoft for software distribution, inventory, virus-prevention, and patch management leads to prestigious honor for midwest healthcare provider
November 16, 2005 Boston, MA, USA
ManageSoft®, a leading, privately held provider of intelligent solutions that help enterprises deploy, secure, and manage their client software and hardware infrastructures, today announced that one of its leading customers, Sisters of Mercy Health System (Mercy), was named to the prestigious "InfoWorld 100" for 2005.
The annual InfoWorld 100 list honors IT projects that demonstrate the most creative use of cutting-edge technologies - those that stretch beyond typical solutions to achieve well-defined business goals. Sisters of Mercy Health System earned its honor for its implementation of ManageSoft's flagship software-management solution on 16,000 PCs in approximately two months. Today, Mercy uses ManageSoft to deploy and update software, standardize and lockdown desktop configurations, manage inventory, and more.
"We are delighted to receive this honor from InfoWorld magazine," said Mick Murphy, chief technology officer. "Through careful inventory discovery, ManageSoft helped us avoid overbuying for our PC refresh cycle, which saved us substantial money. On top of that compelling ROI, ManageSoft's dramatically lower hardware requirements, lower labor costs, and more effective solutions for software distribution and patching have delivered tremendous additional benefit to Mercy."
"We applaud the tremendous results that Mercy has achieved with ManageSoft and congratulate them on their placement in the InfoWorld 100," said Walter Elliot, chief executive officer of ManageSoft. "Their outstanding accomplishments speak to the rapid scalability of our solution, the breadth of functionality that ManageSoft can provide, and the very compelling return that can be achieved in short order. We look forward to working alongside them to extend their successes in the future."
An Up-Close Look at Sisters of Mercy Health System's Award-Winning Use of ManageSoft
With 19 acute-care hospitals and more than 4,000 licensed beds in four states, 26,000 workers, and 3,100 medical staff members, Sisters of Mercy Health System is a large, diverse, and distributed leader in health care delivery. It faced the challenge of consolidating seven independent IS shops and streamlining the management of more than 16,000 desktop PCs, including an unknown number of different models of desktop and laptop PCs deployed and an unknown number of applications installed on those machines.
According to Murphy, virus outbreaks were a key concern. "We were concerned about our ability to respond to virus outbreaks that could infect our PCs," he said. "We wanted to be able to keep virus definitions up to date. We also wanted to ensure our operating systems and applications were updated with bug-fixes and security patches to keep them up and running at all times. We needed to ensure license compliance and application/data security while minimizing IT labor requirements."
Mercy also sought a solution that would enable it to distribute software and patches, provide an accurate inventory of software and hardware deployed at various sites, and streamline the preparations for ongoing PC refresh cycles.
After conducting a proof-of-concept and speaking to independent analysts, the Mercy IT team was impressed by what ManageSoft had to offer. "ManageSoft fully leverages Microsoft Active Directory -- unlike other applications that pull information from Active Directory and maintain a separate database for application deployment," Murphy said. "ManageSoft required only one server and numerous non-dedicated distribution servers, reducing costs.
"We selected ManageSoft as the cornerstone for establishing, updating, and maintaining standard, defined enterprise desktop configurations. We chose ManageSoft agents and distribution servers as our infrastructure for collecting end-user inventory data (hardware and software), loading standard applications based on defined user roles, delivering application patches and security updates, and other PC-management tasks."
After a brief training session, Mercy deployed ManageSoft to 12,000 PCs within four weeks. Within another month, the deployment expanded to an additional 4,000 machines. Sisters of Mercy achieved impressive results in numerous areas:
The Results of Sisters of Mercy's Implementation
 Inventory Management - "Our environment had grown unwieldy. The ManageSoft agent polled each system and returned very valuable "IT Business Intelligence" (ITBI) data to us, showing that we had more than 130 different models of PCs deployed and more than 10,000 different applications installed. For an organization our size, this was unmanageable. The ITBI data we received was invaluable."
Significant Budget Savings From Postponed PC Refreshes - "Initially, we suspected we would need to replace 65 percent of our PCs to meet our standard configuration (Pentium 4, 2GHz, 500 MB RAM,). After we received our inventory data from ManageSoft, we saw we needed to replace only 55 percent of our PCs. That accurate hardware inventory enabled us to avoid 'overbuying' for our PC refresh cycle, enabling us to postpone significant hardware acquisition costs."
A Lack of Updates - "We discovered that more than 1,600 PCs lacked the Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 1 update. For our first use of ManageSoft, we updated those machines with SP1."
Standardized Desktop Configurations - "We currently have 600 applications packaged for use. We expect this will rise to approximately 1,100 in the future, about one-tenth of what was previously deployed. This will result in significant savings for Mercy."
Application Packaging and Desktop Lockdown - "We've created several classes of workstations, including kiosks, shared workstations, mobile users, and lightly managed users. Each class has a different level of 'lockdown' to protect data and prevent system corruption. ManageSoft makes it easier to deploy applications in a lock down environment."
Dramatically Lower Hardware Requirements - "We believe that ManageSoft's hardware requirements were significantly lower than alternative solutions (as much as 90 percent lower in some cases). In fact, the hardware cost of implementing one competing solution would have been more than the cost of buying the hardware and software for our ManageSoft implementation."
Much Lower Labor Cost - "We need only three FTEs to manage our desktop PCs. Other solutions would have required additional labor. Now, those labor resources can focus on higher-value projects."
Much More Information - "We now have an accurate, enterprise-wide picture of our desktop assets. We know what's running in what locations."
Better Patching - "We have patched our PCs up to a given level, which ensures better performance, fewer trouble tickets, and greater productivity."
More Effective Software Distribution - "ManageSoft is fast and flexible in the software-packaging process."
New Policies to Close Loopholes - "We have instituted new policies to address emerging threats to the security and stability of our PCs, such as spyware, screen savers, games, and other programs."
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