"The enhanced performance and added functionality has certainly been a great benefit to the business. The greatest impact, however, has been on the ease of management and maintenance of Exchange," - Deon Myburgh, LAN manager at Medi-Clinic head office.
National network integration, support and service specialist Integr8 IT has been responsible for Medi-Clinic, a major player in the private healthcare industry, enhancing its IT infrastructure thereby improving its ability to leverage off electronic communication. Medi-Clinic has even greater reach throughout its hospital network.
As experts in the field of network solution integration and infrastructure design, deployment and proactive management, Integr8 IT was contracted to facilitate a complete Active Directory Microsoft Exchange 2000 upgrade and the implementation of thin-client technology at Medi-Clinic.
The detailed project has presented the healthcare provider with immediate benefit through its now centralised infrastructure such as unified messaging, enhanced uptime, improved productivity and more.
Medi-Clinic is an established leader in the private hospital industry and provides cost-effective quality healthcare. The company boasts more than 5 000 beds and 10 000 fulltime staff servicing 41 hospitals spread throughout SA and two in Namibia.
Deon Myburgh, LAN manager at Medi-Clinic`s head office, says an effective IT infrastructure that can adequately handle substantial data input, storage and backup is crucial to the successful management of this extensive healthcare network.
"E-mail has become a business critical application within Medi-Clinic. All confirmations from the hospitals to the medical aids are transmitted from an SMTP connector on the AS400 (Hospital System) to the Exchange Server, from where the message is delivered. These messages have to be tracked and delivery confirmed, a task, which is cumbersome and time consuming with Exchange 5.5. Business continuity and DRP were also factors that prompted us to embark on this project. We decided to implement a centralised system - one that could be accessed from all over the country at any terminal and still be able to handle the volume of traffic without infringing upon available bandwidth. Business continuity and DRP were also factors that prompted us to embark on this project," explains Myburgh.
Although all agree that the project was detailed and involved meticulous attention to intricate systems, the end result is that Medi-Clinic`s administration process has been refined to the point that it no longer needs to make changes to its two different account databases.
"This was definitely one of the more complex upgrades in terms of attention to detail, environment and infrastructure. Medi-Clinic is a major player in the private care industry and the upgrade to a unified messaging and thin-client centralised environment involved a number of systems. Our system specialists have the skills and experience as well as product knowledge to successfully handle a Microsoft-centric migration of this kind," explains Lance Fanaroff, director at Integr8 IT.
"The major difficulty was merging the current exchange directory and Active Directory structure for more than 2 000 objects and address lists and performing the upgrade in such a way that no downtime was experienced. Ease of administration has been a major benefit because the active director offers a single point of administration. Medi-Clinic also has streamlined support procedures and enhanced security," says Francois Conradie, system specialist at Integr8 IT.
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Integr8 IT (Pty) Ltd is a wholly owned network technology services and solutions company in southern Africa. Based in SA, the company employs a wealth of highly skilled and certified system engineers who are directly involved in high level consulting, support and integration.
With offices located in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, and representation in Port Elizabeth, East London and Port Elizabeth, Integr8 IT spans nationally across Southern Africa and Africa continent. It has the people and expertise to plan, deploy, manage and maintain an information technology environment.
Whether a client seeks better control of its networked environment or is in need of practical solutions, complex or simple, Integr8 IT provides the answers with enhanced information technology services.
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