Case Study: Microsoft Sharepoint in the Cloud - Bluelock Helps Codesigned Deliver for WellStar Health Systems - Page 2
WellStar Health System offers a diverse patient population throughout Northwest Georgia’s metropolitan area and more than 12,000 team members at five hospitals and physicians’ offices. WellStar’s marketing department needed a comprehensive SharePoint solution with dynamic content, custom webparts and manageable infrastructure to assist them in the launch of www.wellstar.org. However, with an aggressive go-live date for the website and its IT department inundated with projects for several more months, the marketing department turned to Codesigned for the project. Because Codesigned SharePoint Private Cloud runs in a Bluelock Virtual Datacenter, they were able to quickly design and host a multi-tier farm to meet WellStar’s needs.
“What also separated Bluelock was the company’s certification as a VMware vCloud Datacenter service provider,” said Nathan Clevenger, IT Infrastructure Manager, Codesigned. “While other providers can offer the virtual machines, we weren’t able to get our hands on the resources, which in turn doesn’t allow us to respond quickly to our clients’ needs. With Bluelock’s implementation of the VMware vCloud Director self-service interface, we are fully in control of the environment and can quickly deploy more resources when a client requests them.”
"I feel like with Codesigned, that I have a partner for life. They provide services like infrastructure, design services, crisis management, any updates I might need. I really don’t feel like need to go anywhere else. They provide a full spectrum of service, and on demand. It could not be better,” said Susan Deisenroth, Director of Online Marketing at WellStar Health System.
Bluelock Virtual Datacenters take minutes to set up, either through the vCloud Director-based self-service interface or with Bluelock’s managed services team. Users can build new virtual machines (VMs) quickly from public and private catalogs of VM templates, or simply upload VMs they already have running in an environment. With Bluelock Virtual Datacenters, users can easily subtract and add capacity as they go, paying for only what is used. With the ability to upload and download any VMware- compatible workloads, users can easily migrate VMDK files to and from the Bluelock Virtual Datacenter. The solution is built on open standards with Open Virtualization Format (OVF) packaging for the transport of workloads and interoperability, with additional support for the VMware vCloud API.
Business Value
Codesigned developed a multi-tiered environment using Bluelock Virtual Datacenters and spun up a full development, authoring, staging and production farm for its SharePoint Private Cloud. The company not only experienced the scalability and agility they sought, but also utilized additional benefits including Bluelock Portfolio, a decision support tool that provides performance and financial analysis reporting, enabling them to make better decisions about their infrastructure and wrench the most value out of their cloud investment.
“Bluelock enables us to dial up or down resources or even bring up a large server farm in a short period of time based on a client’s needs, and with Bluelock Portfolio’s resource and cost transparency we’re able to breakdown cost per client,” said Clevenger. “Bluelock Portfolio offers deeper visibility into the true cost of IT resources, enabling us to adjust our Virtual Datacenters to better align utilization with spending and help us educate our clients about what is happening in their environment and the impact of specific behaviors. Bluelock Portfolio simply provides unprecedented visibility and control that continues to deliver added value to our team and clients.”
