Hutt Valley Health

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Partnering approach helps IT upgrade at Hutt Valley Health

Some time ago Tony Cooke, information services manager for Hutt Valley Health, decided the organisation's complex infrastructure needed significant upgrading to cope with growth projections. He also wanted to standardise the networking software and the operating system, and introduce enterprise-wide application version control.

"There was also a need to control our costs and help desk. We didn't want to add more help-desk staff as we added more PCs, and we wanted users to have a more centrally managed environment," Tony Cooke said.

"We were fortunate in our timing because Microsoft Windows 2000 was just around the corner. We decided to go with Windows 2000 on the desktop and upgrade our Novell back-end to establish a good robust platform that we could maintain."

Hutt Valley Health selected Fujitsu through a tender process to plan and manage the migration of the organisation's 500 PCs to a new desktop image - or standard operating environment - on the Windows 2000 platform.

"We felt that Fujitsu had listened to us carefully," said Mr Cooke. "They wanted to run a series of workshops to help our organisation evaluate where it wanted to go, tie it in with our business, and then come up with a plan which would accommodate the budget and the need to work alongside us. In the process, we wanted that knowledge transferred from Fujitsu staff to our staff.

"The other vendors took the approach of: 'We know best, we can do it all for you and it will cost you this much. We'll write your terms of reference, do your business case and manage everything for you.' Fujitsu was willing to work alongside us as peers and sort through the issues."

Fujitsu used its Partnering Programme methodology to initiate a good working relationship with key Hutt Valley Health staff and facilitate their involvement in the planning process.

"Being a small IT department, I also saw this as a risk management exercise for us," said Mr Cooke.

"We wanted to bring in that outside expertise and their knowledge of other industries. Fujitsu had rolled-out the standard desktop image in a number of other New Zealand companies of about our size, so they could draw on a wealth of experience."

Fujitsu's Net Solutions consultancy unit used its recently launched Windows 2000 Integration Centre and NETIMAGE specialised Standard Desktop Image tool in the image development process. Once the standard desktop image was built to Hutt Valley Health's requirements, it was tested and proven against the new infrastructure. Then it was handed over to the customer team, which managed the rollout to 500 desktop PCs.

In a customer satisfaction survey and interviews with key Hutt Valley Health and Fujitsu project staff, the project was judged a success by all parties. It received an "excellent" rating in the survey results. Hutt Valley Health considered Fujitsu's performance throughout the project to be "outstanding".

No major issues were encountered during the course of the project, which was completed on time, under budget and meeting all customer expectations.