case study
Breakthrough
Consolidating Multiple E-mail Systems into One Integrated Solution
Imagine It
Consolidating e-mail systems for over 65,000 HHS Federal and contract staff geographically disbursed across Washington DC, Baltimore MD, Atlanta GA, and 12 major regional sites throughout the United States.
Negotiating Technical and Political Issues
With 12 Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) comprising more than 100,000 employees and contractors dispersed across the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has long faced the technical challenge of incompatible e-mail systems. While employees across OPDIVs could easily send and receive e-mails, the inability to share calendars across systems made it difficult to schedule meetings. Further, different budgets and different timelines created obstacles to the Department’s ability to upgrade a standard electronic mail solution with consistent versions across OPDIVs. At the same time, maintaining the various systems for each division was very costly. In 2004, HHS engaged Unisys as a partner to help consolidate the e-mail systems across the large OPDIVs – including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Indian Health Service (IHS). Negotiating several political and technical issues, HHS has managed to successfully transition more than 70,000 mailboxes into a single, integrated system based on Microsoft Exchange messaging software and primarily Unisys ES7000 servers, and is on track to migrate the remaining 2,000 mailboxes within the next 2 months. Consolidation provides the economies of scale to staff a 24 x 7 x 365 operational system, which would have been cost prohibitive for each OPDIV.
Done
The Department of Health and Human Services partnered with Unisys to build a unified electronic mail system for the Office of the Secretary and 10 of its 12 Operating Divisions
Results: Enabling Secure Messaging
The Department’s disparate e-mail systems have been consolidated into a single, integrated system that streamlines communications while meeting the security requirements of its various Operating Divisions.
Metrics
The Department went from 194 Microsoft Office Exchange Servers to 16 active Exchange nodes and reduced the number of physical locations with e-mail servers from 109 to 3.
Addressing Diverse Requirements
Many of the OPDIVs are large, mature organizations within their own rights, so the HHS/Unisys team had to be creative in delivering a system that would suit the needs of each OPDIV. As HHS Chief Technology Officer Ken Calabrese recalls, “We had to come up with alternatives to make everyone comfortable.” As a result, Unisys worked closely with representatives from the OPDIVs, reviewing each one’s system requirements and having them test the design. Calabrese notes that “We did pilot after pilot after pilot until it was right, and then we went with the big bang. After completion of pilot migrations at the Central Office and two regions, CMS migrated their remaining 3,600 users from their legacy GroupWise system to the HHSMail system on two successive weekends spanning 10 calendar days.”
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Soon after, all 7,300 CMS users were fully operational on the system. That major milestone allowed Unisys to get actual user feedback for improving the technical solution as part of the firm’s Continuous Improvement Initiative. As other OPDIVs migrated one by one, additional challenges arose – specifically for the CDC and FDA. Extension of the HHSMail system to CDC required the standup of a completely selfsufficient center capable of providing routine support to CDC and disaster recovery for users supported at the primary site located in Reston, VA. A commercial data center in Atlanta was selected as the alternative managed service center for HHSMail because of its proximity to the large user base and technical talent located at CDC. The commercial data center also serves as the hot site for critical CDC systems. The systems management team provides operational support and management utilizing a variety of remote systems management tools, with local systems administrators and engineers assigned to data centers to provide direct support. In the case of the FDA, security was the driver for an alternative solution. Because of the highly sensitive nature of the information the FDA handles, an alternative was required that met the business requirements of FDA yet leveraged the investment and operational infrastructure established to support HHSMail. FDA and the HHSMail program office devised a solution that satisfied FDA business requirements yet leveraged the support infrastructure provided through remote management by the systems management team located in Reston, in similar fashion to the management of the Atlanta site. This established the third operational environment for HHSMail. Calabrese stressed that “the FDA enclave was not compromised by an alternative meeting the business drivers for both FDA and the HHSMail Program.” Over 14,000 mailboxes are supported in the FDA enclave.
Microsoft Technology Key to Consolidation Success
The ability of HHS and Unisys to successfully consolidate e-mail systems relied heavily on the use of integrated Unisys and Microsoft technologies, including: • 22 Microsoft Exchange Servers to support 70,000 users; • 8 ISA2004 servers; 8 OWA servers; 6 SharePoint servers; and 8 Exchange Recovery servers; • Unisys ES7000 Enterprise Clusters with Microsoft Exchange 2003 to lower operating costs and enables 6,000 users on a single active node; scaling up to 9,000 users when necessary; • Standard Microsoft Exchange Server configuration of a 3+1 cluster -- in 3 servers active and one in passive failover mode – resulting in 99.95% availability across its systems; • Support of 10,000 Blackberry users and as many Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 users; • Remote Systems Management and monitoring using SNMP-based management tools; • User and account administration via Microsoft SharePoint services as a front-end web-based interface integrating with Microsoft Identity Integration Services backend; • Management of over 20 terabytes of Microsoft Exchange data on primary SANs and 45 terabytes of archival data on secondary SANs; • Support of RPC/HTTPS to ensure secure communications, as well as two-factor authentication for Outlook Web Access capabilities.
Achieving Equity across OPDIVs
With all HHS employees now sharing a common Microsoft Exchange directory, they can locate colleagues anywhere within the agency just by knowing their names. The legacy batch and periodic synchronization of the global address list has been replaced with MIIS, which provides modern, real-time synchronization. A key capability provided to all HHSMail users is a clientless archival tool that greatly enhances the users’ ability to manage their mailboxes. HHS standardized on a 200MB mailbox which, while large in commercial terms, still requires active mailbox management. The archived attachments are available through the native client as well as Outlook Web Access. Calabrese points to the business value of the new system, noting that “The Department is so diverse, and previously the OPDIVs were running independently. We now have parity in the services being provided with all HHSMail users running the same version of Exchange with a standard archival tool, mailbox size and wireless services. Now all the HHSMail users are on the same plane, which brings equity across the Department.” The new system also provides non-stop processing, which is crucial for several of the agencies. “Many OPDIVs businesses run 24 by 7,” says Calabrese, “and Unisys is staffing this system 24 by 7 to ensure that, if there’s an issue, somebody is there, somebody is available to respond – and believe, me, somebody is always available.”
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Calabrese stresses the flexibility of Unisys in devising a solution that would meet everybody’s needs. “IHS is severely resource constrained” he explains, “so we added a basic mailbox that does not have the archival service and is half the size of the standard, 200-megabyte mailboxes; this allows IHS to meet its financial constraints yet fully participate in the major benefits of the program.” “A system like this can’t be cookie cutter – it has to have a core set of standards but with the ability to flex,” states Calabrese. “Unisys brought a tremendous amount of expertise and worked closely with Microsoft to create such a system.”
At a Glance: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Reports to: U.S. Government Mission: Protect the health of and provide essential human services to all Americans. Objective: Develop an enterprise-wide, standardized e-mail and calendaring solution. Results: Increased productivity. Increased security. Reduced maintenance costs. Population served: 72,000 end users
Working in Partnership
Calabrese says the Department has not formally measured the return on investment from the new system, but emphasizes that “We went from 109 physical locations to 3, and from 194 Exchange servers down to 19 – that speaks for itself.” “You can extrapolate from those numbers,” he continues, “the benefits derived, from physical security to the reduction in computer rooms used.” “We now have a solid security infrastructure,” adds Calabrese, “that is universal and immediate.” The system also takes into account the pervasive use of wireless devices, and “Blackberry settings are consistent across HHS,” he says. The success of the system is due in large part to the partnership approach taken by HHS and Unisys. As Calabrese points out, “Unisys understood that they were not negotiating with me – we were negotiating with the users to make sure their needs were met in an affordable manner. We worked together endlessly and tirelessly to make this happen.” “We’ve got a very solid solution built with technical flexibility and creativity,” concludes Calabrese, “and we’re looking forward to the next generation of this.”
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Printed in U S America
04/08
*41371006-000* *BARCODE*
4137 1006-000 Form Number