SERVER IMPLEMENTATION
About Client:
Our client is a veterinary clinic, based out of Arlington area, offering a wide range of services including medical, diagnostic, surgical, and preventive health care needs for pet.
The Challenge:
Our client was running their primary EHR (Electronic Health Record) application hosted on a central workstation (Desktop PC with Windows 7) that was accessed by other desktop PCs across the Front office, Exam Rooms, Lab and Back office. Since the primary workstation was not a server, it used to freeze quite often resulting in loss of productivity and became a single point of failure across the office. Our client had already invested in upgrading this primary workstation recently to latest specs however that didn’t address the issue.
Moreover, our clients knew that the logistical complexity of any further office wide impacting changes or deployment could overwhelm their staff especially since they had gone through an upgrade quite recently.
The Solution:
Client contacted Orion Network Solutions after talking to few other IT service providers. All other providers had suggested client to switch the Primary workstation to a Windows Server 2008 which involved considerable cost. However after consulting with Orion, we understood that due to budgetary restraints a domain client/server environment cannot be setup.
To meet our client’s budget needs, Orionnetwork solutions came up with a creative solution wherein we slightly improved the hardware specs of existing Primary Workstation being used (at fraction of the cost of a new server) and made configuration tweaks to it so it mirrored the role of a server. We also proposed incorporating high availability and redundancy into the environment with the use of RAID and online backup system.
The Implementation
Once client provided their approval, we created a detailed implementation plan with specific dates for implementation. We shared it with client and their office manager and identified key areas where they would like to get a communication update on progress and also added steps for broader staff communication.
We finalized the tweaks, implemented hardware upgrade and configuration tweaks to the Primary Workstation. All other end client systems were configured to connect to this newly configured pseudo “Server” environment through Group Policy mappings thereby making the deployment efficient and hassle-free.
End Result
The Solution was implemented seamlessly and without any major issues. By partnering with Orion Network solutions, our client was able to find a solution to their problem that “worked for them” and within their business constraints. We did not try to sell them a cookie cutter solution. They realized the importance of a tiered IT architecture that has in the end increased their productivity and helped their business.
Our client was impressed by our responsiveness, willingness to work around their constraints and tech capabilities. They went ahead and hired us for our Monthly Dedicated IT Support services as well.
Takeaway
For a successful implementation, several steps needed to be considered, including evaluating readiness, managing costs and developing a deployment strategy. Organizations that do not have the manpower available to handle the extra workload, or the right skills on staff, may feel challenged to take on such an endeavor and either begin an implementation without a comprehensive plan in place, potentially creating more issues down the road, or delay it and pay support-extension fees.
