Manchester PCT
Manchester Primary Care Trust was formed from a merger of the North, Central and South Manchester NHS. It provides healthcare services to the citizens of Manchester covering six key areas: Staying Healthy; Mental health; Personalisation of Community care/urgent care; Primary Care Services, Children, Newborn Babies and Maternity and Planned care with an annual budget of £850 million.
Challenges
Manchester PCT had a requirement to deploy software to more than 1200 client computers in three weeks to support an upgrade of the business critical LORENZO healthcare application. The LORENZO update provided by iSOFT required Administrative privileges to install and it was difficult to identify if the update was installed or had installed successfully. The following challenges needed to be overcome:
- More than 3000 computers across more than 130 sites
- Multiple Active Directory Forests, Domains and Workgroups
- Most users did not have local administrator rights
- A mixture of static and dynamic IP addressing
- Unable to easily identify which computers required the Lorenzo upgrade
- Unable to easily identify which computers had the Lorenzo upgrade
Traditionally projects such as these required the Manchester PCT to bring in additional contract resource often at considerable expense.
The Solution
Certero assisted Manchester PCT in two key areas
- Provided the expertise to repackage the LORENZO client installation files.
- Provided the vehicle (AssetStudio™) to deploy the LORENZO client installation files.
The package created by Certero to deploy the updated LORENZO application client files provided the following
- Copied the appropriate client installation files
- Checked for the correct version of Java Runtime Environment (JRE)
- Installed new Java Certificates
- Registered the Java Certificates within JRE
- Set registry entries for the NCRS Portal website
- Created a new desktop icon
- Returned appropriate error codes to allow detailed monitoring of the application installation progress
- Ensured the quality and integrity of the deployment
AssetStudio™ enabled Manchester PCT to:
- Discover all network computers across their sites
- Identify the Computername, Location, Domain and Operating system
- Deploy an appropriate version of Java Runtime Environment independent of their Forest, Domain or Workgroup Membership
- Identify the computers that required an upgrade of the LORENZO client installation files
- Test the software deployment
- Automate the deployment of the LORENZO package to current and new computers
- Monitor and report on installation progress
Certero and AssetStudio™ ticked all the boxes. AssetStudio™ was installed on a single server in less than 1 day and key staff trained within 1 day. The rollout of the Lorenzo application was completed more than a week ahead of schedule.
As a result of this successful project, Manchester PCT, purchased AssetStudio™ for use across their entire estate. This has enabled them to carry out future projects at minimal cost saving the organisation tens of thousands of pounds whilst ensuring consistent levels of service.
Gary Pomfret, IT Support and Logistics Manager said "Manchester PCT had a significant business challenge to overcome. Deploying the LORENZO Upgrade to more than 1200 computers across more than 40 locations in less than three weeks would have usually required the drafting in of additional contract resource. This is expensive and has a significant overhead in project management and scheduling. Any delays in the project would have had a major impact on the upgrade of LORENZO for the whole of the North West Region."
"When I first discussed the project with Certero they were completely unfazed by the requirements and deadlines. They filled me with confidence on their ability to deliver. Their communication was excellent. Certero managed the project on our behalf and the bi-weekly project status update report kept us completely informed of progress. The project was signed off more than a week ahead of schedule. I certainly know who to call in the future!"
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