“Providing high-availability services on our network requires fast, easy-to-use, diagnostic tools that allow rapid isolation of specific types of traffic for detailed analyses. The Omni³ distributed platform allows me to diagnose traffic in every segment of our network without leaving my office.”-- David Kelly, Network Manager of Baxter Regional Medical Center
Customer Profile - Baxter Regional Medical Center delivers state-of-the-art patient care to 14 counties across two states (northern Arkansas and southern Missouri). This 235-bed tertiary care facility occupies 500,000 square feet of space and employs more than 1,200 individuals and over 500 volunteers. The employees, volunteers and medical staff strive to deliver quality patient care with available infrastructure, systems and financial resources.
Vendor Profile - Since 1990, WildPackets has been developing innovative, high-quality, easy-to-use and valuable solutions to maintain the health and integrity of networks and applications. From the desktop to the datacenter, wired to wireless, distributed and local, WildPackets products enable IT organizations to monitor, troubleshoot, and secure their network systems. WildPackets products are sold in over 60 countries through a broad network of channel and strategic partners. More than 5,000 customers, spanning all industrial sectors and including 80% of the Fortune 1000, use WildPackets products daily to troubleshoot networks and maximize network uptime. WildPackets customers include Agilent, Cisco Systems, Comcast, EDS, Microsoft, Siemens AG, Qualcomm, Unisys, Motorola, and Deutsche Bank. Strategic partners include Aruba, Atheros, Cisco, 3Com, Intel and Symbol Technologies.
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Network
Baxter Regional Medical Center’s network encompasses 750+ nodes spanning multiple buildings with switched 10/100 segments joined to an operations center via fiber-based Gigabit Ethernet lines.
Challenge
• Maintain optimum network performance and resolve problems expeditiously.
• Improve network performance to enable migration of critical applications and services on to the network.
• Reduce network operating costs.
Solution
Baxter Regional selected WildPackets’ Omni³ distributed solution to maintain network performance and deliver services efficiently.
Results
Real-time visibility to remote segments provides faster problem identification and resolution. The immediate benefit is increased network uptime, which allows Baxter Regional to provide more services to its customers - reliably and efficiently.
Growth Demands High Performance Network
Baxter Regional is at the forefront of meeting the increasing demand for health care services in the Twin Lakes area. As a not-for-profit corporation, Baxter Regional’s strategy relies on improving process efficiencies with more automation and with optimal network infrastructure.
Operations at Baxter Regional have migrated to leading-edge clinical and financial applications running on an Ethernet LAN. Mission critical applications—from accounting and personnel to patient care, diagnostics, and drug dispensing systems—run on a network with 750+ nodes spanning multiple buildings with switched 10/100 segments connected to an operations center with fiber-based Gigabit Ethernet lines.
David Kelly, Network Manager at Baxter Regional, maintains optimal performance of the network to meet varying service level demands. Migrating new applications and upgrading existing ones imposes further complexity on this network. David Kelly manages these challenges with adequate network planning and through timely remediation of network problems.
As a current customer of the EtherPeek product line, David Kelly is very familiar with the technology and ease-of-use features that differentiate WildPackets solutions. With increasing network utilization, and geographic expansion, David Kelly recognized that the future would present a different set of challenges. “If we had a printing problem,” he explains, “I had to go to a wiring closet, configure the switch to span the printer port, plug in the laptop, get on the phone and ask the user to print, then capture the packets and bring the trace file back to my desk for analysis.” David recognized that this analysis methodology would not scale for an increasingly distributed network topology.
Omni³ – The Right Prescription for Baxter’s Network
Omni³ is an advanced fault analysis platform for optimizing network services and maximizing uptime on enterprise networks. The platform comprises of the OmniPeek console that connects to Peek DNX engines. Each engine is an autonomous component and performs local real-time expert analyses, and sets filters, alerts, triggers and more.
Baxter Regional placed its Peek DNX engine at the core network switch in its Operations Center. This engine spans different segments of the network and provides the required visibility.
The OmniPeek console, located in Baxter Regional’s IS department, connects to the Peek DNX engine to provide real-time visibility into every segment of the network. This includes centralized expert analysis across all network segments with full drill-down capability to perform refined multi-layered troubleshooting. The OmniPeek console also allows multiple simultaneous captures—from one or more network interfaces including 10/100 Ethernet and full-duplex Gigabit—to provide multi-segment analytics in real time. The console also features enterprise-level user management, logging and security for the Omni³ solution.
The Omni³ solution allows Baxter Regional to utilize existing network infrastructure better. David Kelly continues, “With OmniPeek and Peek DNX, I can connect to any segment of the network, capture packets, perform analysis and remediate most problems within a few minutes.”
Commonality Advantages...from Product Development to ROI for Customers
With an expanding line of products developed over 14 years, WildPackets now covers all network topologies and is positioned to become a leader in networking analysis market. Product development focuses on building modular software components that are usable across all product lines.
Customers derive two significant benefits from this commonality strategy.
First, this strategy yields a faster time-to-market for new products, and for updates and upgrades to existing products, and ensures that network managers always get contemporary solutions that address real, and relevant, issues on their networks. Second, technology familiarity—specifically in the user interface—enables customers to assimilate new products faster and allows them to improve network performance immediately. This results in quicker, and better, return on investment.
The OmniPeek console shares the same user interface as the EtherPeek product line. After installing the Omni³ solution, David Kelly was able to use the new system immediately. The Peek DNX engine provided immediate visibility into all of the network’s fiber trunks from one location, and resulted in efficient network monitoring practices. And, since analysis is performed locally at the engine, the Omni3 solution significantly reduces the amount of network traffic that flows back to the console.
Omni³ Productivity Benefits
David Kelly estimates that Omni³ saves him an hour whenever he needs to manage an issue on the network, and that is a significant productivity benefit for a 750+ node network. “Omni³ was exactly the productivity medicine we needed to keep our LAN in peak performance, and to spend far less time doing it.” While remote troubleshooting saves time for the network manager, a far more significant benefit accrues to Baxter Regional—lapse time reduction in fixing network problems directly translates to increased network uptime.
Improving network performance is one aspect of Baxter Regional’s operational strategy to deliver medical care in its service area. Baxter Regional has consistently ranked in the top one percent nation-wide for patient satisfaction (according to the Press, Ganey Priority Index, a national survey organization) and has one of the most impressive health care systems in the nation. From open heart surgery and cancer care to partial knee replacements and physical rehabilitation, Baxter Regional delivers health care efficiently.
Omni³ helps Baxter Regional deliver on its mission.
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