Novell Nterprise is good for what ails michigan hospital

A hospital caring for patients 24 hours a day needs a network that keeps the same hours. That's why Central Michigan Community Hospital recently replaced its Microsoft* Windows NT* system with Novell® NetWare® 6, boosting network reliability from 90 to 99.999 percent.

"As a hospital, we need to concentrate on patient care, not on how to keep our network from going down," said Gil Lalo, CIO of Central Michigan Community Hospital. "With NetWare, we have dramatically improved the working environment at the hospital. The IT staff can now walk the halls without having to avoid frustrated users."

A not-for-profit hospital with 700 employees and more than 75 doctors on staff, Central Michigan Community Hospital experienced significant network downtime with Windows NT, typically costing the organization up to $250,000 a day in lost revenue opportunities and requiring the IT staff to continually install operating system patches in an effort to improve performance. The hospital needed a stable and secure solution to support its life-critical work and ease its IT burden, and it selected a Novell Nterprise™ solution — including NetWare, GroupWise® and ZENworks® — over Microsoft Windows* and Exchange to restore confidence in the network and provide users the tools they need to effectively do their jobs.

"I've worked for several healthcare organizations during the past 15 years, and I'm a firm believer that Novell simplifies virtually every aspect of managing a network," Lalo said. "With Microsoft, the performance just isn't there and we got tired of their 'patch of the week.' There is no way to efficiently manage a network of any size without Novell at the heart of it."

With a reliable network, secure e-mail and simplified desktop management, Central Michigan Community Hospital has removed technology as a barrier and made it a means for providing quality patient care. With 99.999 percent network uptime, hospital doctors and staff have renewed trust in their systems and are more productive. While ZENworks is managing hospital servers and desktops — dramatically lowering administrative costs by standardizing 100 percent of hospital desktops and reducing time to set up a new PC to minutes instead of hours — GroupWise is simplifying user administration and providing superior protection against virus attacks and subsequent downtime.

"Our entire Novell solution makes it easy to administer users and groups, provide security, and distribute applications," Lalo said. "One administrator now oversees our entire network, including GroupWise, on a main campus and five remote sites and he is not feeling overworked. In fact, we are trying to find new things for him to do."

Novell NetWare, GroupWise and ZENworks are part of Novell Nterprise, a set of services that improve communication, simplify and automate network management, and allow workers to be productive regardless of location, device or platform.