Case Study

BUPA – Delivering a Provident Infrastructure

Covers Novell solution technologies, Citrix MetaFrame XP and Centralis Integration Toolkit. BUPA is a health and care organisation.

The Customer

BUPA began in 1947 as The British United Provident Association, and is now a global health and care organisation, with nearly four million members in 190 countries worldwide. BUPA is a provident association, re-investing its profits into improved health and care services.

	This combination of technologies offers our customer the best of both worlds – the flexibility of Citrix and the central management of Novell’s eDirectory.
	Rodger Olive, Business Development Manager for BUPA, Centralis

In the UK, BUPA has 35 hospitals and over 245 care homes, as well as it's a chain of nurseries and a preventive healthcare business, Wellness. BUPA employs around 40,000 people in the UK, plus over 1,500 employees abroad

Since opening their first hospital in 1979 BUPA has grown to become the UK's largest operator of care homes and retirement accommodation, looking after over 25,000 older people every week. BUPA pioneered the concept of health screening in the UK, and now runs the largest network of screening centres in Europe.

BUPA's successful international division has around one million members worldwide, with offices in Hong Kong, Spain, Ireland, Thailand and Saudi Arabia.

The Challenge

In 2001 BUPA set out to define a new strategic architecture capable of supporting the organisation through rapid change and rapid growth.

The architecture had to meet a number of business and technical needs, to:

• Enable international, home based and roaming users access to their full suite of desktop applications
• Meet the requirements for expanding use of email across the organisation
• Provide directory based security, management and software distribution
• Enable web-based delivery of applications, including appropriate security and personalisation for both internal staff and external customer access
• Support the use of Citrix® MetaFrame® or similar technologies to enable the delivery of standard Windows® applications to remote users, locations or non-standard devices
• Be scalable, resilient and secure
• Be compatible with BUPA's network and internet infrastructure plans, including LAN / WAN architectures, firewall etc.
• Minimise potential performance bottlenecks and continuity options through the appropriate use of load balancing / sharing technologies

The existing infrastructure was not without its own challenges. Departmental level decisions on software purchase and deployment had led to a number of Citrix MetaFrame server farms being set up to deliver specific applications. BUPA had also struggled to find a software distribution package capable of reliably installing the full range of applications to its desktop clients. To add to the problem, the links to most of BUPA’s remote sites such as care homes were low bandwidth, typically only 64 Kb.

Overall BUPA was seeking the ability to securely deliver any application to any user at any location, including over internet connection, without having to install software onto the client device and without increasing support costs.

This was particularly brought into focus by the Gateway project, which offered the opportunity to deliver BUPA’s business systems to a new office providing back office Health Insurance Claims processing in India. The new location had no current infrastructure, and offered the opportunity to trial a complete new corporate architecture under challenging circumstances, without impacting on an existing operational unit.

Defining the Solution

BUPA took a great deal of care in defining the requirements and components for the new strategy. A key requirement was to develop a common IT strategy based on infrastructure as an enabler to the business, re-useable across BUPA as a shared service. A costed, supported and standard infrastructure would allow IS within BUPA to provide a consistent and valued service to the business. Based on these firm business requirements, solutions from a number of information technology companies were examined and evaluated.

From the technology evaluation, BUPA selected eDirectory™ from Novell® as its corporate metadirectory. This provided the organisation with the proven security and scalability it required, particularly with the plan to provide customer and employee access to systems over secure internet connections.

Following the decision to adopt eDirectory, BUPA looked for a partner to carry out a strategic review of the application deployment and delivery options available, and selected Centralis.

Centralis is an established systems integrator and consulting partner of both Novell and Citrix, with a market leading reputation in the integration of the two technologies. BUPA engaged Centralis to carry out both a strategic architecture review, and to build a proof of concept environment based on the findings. The purpose of the project was specifically to design and build an environment suitable to meet BUPA’s business objectives.

The review recommended an integrated environment based on the following:

• Central Citrix MetaFrame XP™ server farm for client independent application provision, and delivery of two tier applications over remote working and WAN connections
• eDirectory to provide directory based security and management
• Novell Account Management to integrate BUPA’s new NT domain into eDirectory
• ZENworks® for Desktops ver. 3.2 to provide directory enabled software distribution across the Citrix MetaFrame server farm, and to LAN based PCs
• Novell Portal Services and iChain for Web-based delivery of applications

Proving The Solution

Based on the findings of the strategic review, BUPA commissioned Centralis to build a proof of concept environment, and deliver a set of business applications, including core office applications and a complex call centre application never successfully delivered using Citrix MetaFrame. Over a two week period Centralis built a Citrix MetaFrame XP environment, successfully took and deployed “snapshots” of the applications using ZENworks and integrated the NT domain architecture into eDirectory.

Typically printing can be one of the major issues in a thin client environment, and Centralis used the ThinPrint software to reduce the bandwidth requirements.

On completion of the proof of concept stage, BUPA had a working environment for the new office in India, delivered from its London offices to a satellite “Indian” office in Manchester.

In line with its policy of involving groups across Information Services, the proposed solution and the principles behind it were demonstrated to a cross-section of IS staff before the project proceeded to the next phase.

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Delivering the Solution

Moving from proof of concept to operational deployment required a combined project made up of resources from BUPA, Novell Consulting and Centralis. Snapshots had to be taken for the full suite of applications, and delivered both through the NAL (Novell Application Launcher) desktop and Novell Portal. With WAN communication over satellite links, performance and bandwidth utilisation were key concerns.

The project took approx three months, during which time fifteen applications were processed and deployed. BUPA project staff were located in India to assist with end-user training and deployment issues.

To complete the project, Centralis made extensive use of its integration toolset, featuring the AXE and Contex software. Centralis® AXE was used to optimise the ZENworks snapshots for Citrix MetaFrame deployment, and also to reduce significantly the time taken to process snapshots into working application objects. Contex was used to allow user settings for Microsoft Windows Terminal Services and Citrix MetaFrame to be added to user templates in the eDirectory, and managed through ConsoleOne.

Deploying applications in this environment remains one of the major challenges facing any customer (or integrator!). To overcome these difficulties, Centralis and BUPA used a standard methodology.

Evaluation
Each software package was installed into a development Citrix MetaFrame environment for evaluation purposes before progressing with a ZENworks based installation. This allowed for troubleshooting without impact on any of the production servers.

SnAPPshot
Once the software has been “passed” for deployment, the application is installed on one of the Citrix MetaFrame servers in the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) environment. The UAT servers are maintained to be at the same level as those in the production environment, ensuring that the snAPPshot is fully compatible, and testing is carried out in a mirror of the production environment.

AXE Processing
The application snAPPshot is then processed using Centralis AXE. This carries out three main functions. Firstly it cleans the snAPPshot, removing any unnecessary files and registry settings. Secondly it applies processing rules to ensure that the object meets BUPAs application standards for username, directory entries, file paths etc. Finally AXE splits the application object into two objects – one for the machine containing the shared server-based installation, and one for the user, to deliver their directory-enabled, personalised installation.

Conflict Avoidance
AXE is then used to profile the application file dates and versions from the snAPPshot against the history for the server farm, predicting any conflicts. This allows the administrator to predict and analyse any conflict between file versions (e.g. .DLLS) used by the new application with any of the existing, installed applications.

UAT
The resulting SnAPPshot is deployed to a user acceptance testing environment. This allows project staff to test basic functionality, and experienced users to put the software through production quality and multi-user tests before it is issued to the live environment.

Deployment
Only when the application has passed through all these stages and tests are the ZENworks for Desktops application objects assigned to the servers and users in the live environment.

Benefits to the Customer

This combination of technology has provided BUPA with the means to deliver its business systems to remote workers, and to locations such as the India office, without having to increase significantly its overall bandwidth, or to install software clients onto the PCs. As the business systems were kept in the central UK locations, the cost of additional infrastructure and local support was kept to a minimum.

Interestingly, as the completed production environment was used for the first time, users reported that systems access in the India office, over the International Point to Point link, was actually faster than LAN based access from the offices near to the BUPA datacenter.

	In Centralis BUPA found experts who also matched our delivery approach in every way and, best of all, kept to their promises
	Ian Shaw, Head of IT Services, BUPA

Utilising the combined Novell and Citrix solution has also allowed BUPA to reduce support overheads in target areas. Automating application distribution using ZENworks, and centralising the deployment onto the MetaFrame server farm removes the need for support staff to visit the remote sites. For both UK and international operations, the savings are significant.

Administration of users is also greatly simplified. eDirectory templates automatically assign applications to new users, with ZENworks for Desktops handling software personalisation via eDirectory. ZENworks for Desktops also allows administrators to diagnose and heal deployed applications, and users to self-heal their personal installs.

Rodger Olive, Business Development Manager for Centralis responsible for BUPA, stated "This combination of technologies offers our customer the best of both worlds – the flexibility of Citrix and the central management of Novell’s eDirectory. Novell’s ZENworks in this environment is a highly effective way of ensuring standards in application deployment across Citrix MetaFrame server farms. Creating a reliable and secure Citrix MetaFrame environment is central to BUPA’s requirement for a common infrastructure which can be deployed wherever in the world it is needed."

Follow-on benefits

Having successfully set up a satellite office in another continent with minimal impact on support costs and infrastructure, BUPA is reviewing the opportunities offered by this new common infrastructure.

The ability to deliver systems into any location, both UK and international, has considerable potential benefits in terms of increased markets and flexibility.

Future

The next major group to be targeted will be field-based staff and managers, who require systems and information access from portables. Extending access to these "road warriors" will add further to the benefits of the new common architecture.

Over the next year, BUPA will also move to consolidate all Citrix access onto the central server farm, phasing out the existing, application based departmental deployments. This new consolidated, standard approach is typical of the vision of IT which the customer has embraced. Rodger Olive of Centralis comments "BUPA certainly has the vision and commitment to deliver on its strategy. It is one of the few organisations in my experience which has successfully combined the skills of design, projects, support and external partners into a true solutions package".

Conclusions

BUPA has seen the benefits of combining leading edge technologies to deliver a strategic vision. Combining directory and server based computing technologies may not yet be established as a mainstream solution, but based on this experience it clearly has the potential to deliver.

The customer has also experienced the benefits of working with a solutions partner. Ian Shaw, Head of IT Services at BUPA commented '"When an organisation seeks to exploit leading edge technology, to recognise that you need a partner which is an expert to make success easier. In Centralis BUPA found experts who also matched our delivery approach in every way and, best of all, kept to their promises".

Note to Editors:
Centralis is a registered trademark; and AXE and Contex are trademarks of Centralis in the United States and other countries. Novell and ZENworks are registered trademarks and eDirectory is a trademark of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Citrix®, MetaFrame®, ICA®, MetaFrame XP™ and Citrix Business Alliance™ are registered trademarks or trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. in the US and other countries. Company, organisation and product names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
About Centralis
Centralis is an independent consultancy and software developer, endorsed as a Premier-level Citrix Business Alliance Partner™, Novell® Solutions Partner, and Microsoft Certified Partner. Centralis offers solutions, which reduce the costs and improve the flexibility of customers IT solutions.
Centralis’ mission is to simplify the desktop device to become a business commodity, standardise delivery of software to become a service, and centralise management to a single point of change.

For further information, please contact:
Ewen Anderson
Centralis
The Carriage House, Upper Wawensmoor, Wootton Wawen, Warwickshire, B95 6BS, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1564 795911
Fax: +44 (0)1564 795912

Email: ewen_anderson@centralis.co.uk
Website: www.centralis.co.uk

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