Cut in costs
Baptist Health IT needed to cut operating expenses and provide roaming capabilities to hospital staff.
In addition to cost reduction, Ben McLarin, senior manager of information technology, had another issue he wanted to address. “Hospital administrators and finance folks needed to be able to access financial, demographic, payroll, and insurance information from their desktops, from conference rooms, from remote locations, from anywhere,” he said. “I knew we could improve productivity if we kept the same functionality and added roaming capabilities.”
With his large installed base, and responsibility for applications at all five Baptist Health hospitals, ease of administration was also a concern. McLarin wanted to be able to manage his terminal emulation clients remotely, from a central location.
Baptist Health employees had already been using about 2,000 licenses of Reflection software for Windows-based emulation, so McLarin didn’t hesitate to investigate other product options with the host-access vendor.
Ben Mclarin – SENIOR MANAGER OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Baptist Health
For nearly 50 years, the residents of northeast Florida and southeast Georgia have depended on Baptist Health for all their medical needs. With four hospitals, twenty clinics, and a home-health agency, among other facilities, Baptist Health is the region’s most comprehensive health-care provider.
Baptist Health is committed to continually enhancing patient care while keeping costs in check. When a quarterly review of operating expenses revealed that the IT department’s numbers were high, Baptist Health employed Reflection for the Web to cut desktop costs and improve patient care in the process.
The more McLarin and his team explored the capabilities of Reflection for the Web, the more attractive the entire product line looked in terms of cost, functionality, and flexibility. Using Reflection for the Web, McLarin found that he could connect local and remote users to applications on his AS/400, OpenVMS, and RS/6000 hosts. He could also:
⦁ Deploy, configure, and track web or Windows sessions from the same web-based management console.
⦁ Use the Java-based proxy server to provide maximum encryption—AES and 3DES—over SSL/TLS.
⦁ Programmatically customize sessions using a rich set of APIs and Java or JavaScript.
Mclarin was even more convinced that using Reflection for the Web was the way to go when he realized he could give users the information access they needed – and shrink costs – by changing the mix of his license counts. “Because of the flexibility and functionality that Reflection afforded us, we were able to move to 500 Windows-based licenses and 500 web-based licenses. We actually got more for less.”
Ben Mclarin – SENIOR MANAGER OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Baptist Health
According to McLarin, our consultants were instrumental in making the transition to Reflection for the Web as smooth as possible. The new implementation affects at least half of the Baptist Health system and the feedback from both users and IT is overwhelmingly positive. “Users aren’t tethered to their desks anymore,” McLarin said. “They have a link and a password, and away they go.”
There’s new-found flexibility for the IT staff as well. With Reflection, they can install, configure, secure, and monitor both web- and Windows-based terminal sessions from one central location. There’s no need for costly, time-consuming trips to every user desktop.
“It’s rare when you can improve performance and cut costs at the same time. We’ve achieved both with Reflection,” McLarin said. “Plus, we’re able to serve those who serve our community.
