Customer Solution Case Study
/ Medtronic Expects to Cut Costs, Increase Availability with Unified Communications
Overview
Country or Region:United States
Industry:Life sciences—Medical devices
Customer Profile
Medtronic is a medical technology developer and provider with fiscal year 2009 revenues exceeding U.S.$14 billion. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Medtronic has offices worldwide and approximately 38,000 employees.
Business Situation
Medtronic was standardizing its communications and wanted a unified messaging solution that offered added features for voice mail, higher availability, and enhanced privacy for messaging.
Solution
Medtronic deployed Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 as part of an early adoption program and will implement Unified Messaging as it standardizes its phone system across the enterprise.
Benefits
- Enriched communication and collaboration
- Greater work force mobility
- Higher availability
- Reduced costs and administration
- Improved privacy and security
Thomas Dechmann, Senior Principal IT Technologist, Medtronic
Medtronic, the world’s largest medical device innovator, began an initiative to standardize its communications infrastructure to increase efficiency. The company was using a third-party product to provide users with a message waiting indicator for voice mail, but the product was unable to scale to meet the company’s needs. Medtronic also wanted to increase availability and improve privacy and security to align with federal regulations and partner requests. The company became an early adopter of Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 and plans to implement Unified Messaging in a phased rollout that aligns with the standardization of its phone system. As a result, Medtronic expects it will enrich communication and collaboration and provide its work force with greater mobility. It also plans to increase system availability, reduce costs and IT administration, and improve privacy and security.
Situation
Medtronic started in 1949 as a medical equipment repair shop in a garage and is now a multinational company with 38,000 employees and 10,000 contract workers dispersed across the globe. The company developed the first wearable, battery-powered cardiac pacemaker and adapted additional technologies for the human body, including radio frequency therapies, mechanical devices, drug and biologic delivery devices, and diagnostic tools. Today, Medtronic technologies are used to treat more than 30 chronic diseases.
To keep pace with its innovative therapies, Medtronic is also committed to adapting the latest IT technology for its enterprise, which spans 120 countries. In 2008, Medtronic was using Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise Edition and the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client. The company was also using Private Branch Exchange (PBX) systems from a variety of providers and vendors for PBX and voice-mail solutions at its different locations. As part of a company initiative, Medtronic undertook a multiyear project to standardize its phone systems and messaging and collaboration environment for better efficiency. “It’s part of a company strategy to be ‘one Medtronic, one IT,’ ” says Thomas Dechmann, Senior Principal IT Technologist at Medtronic.
The company started by implementing Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007. It also began upgrading to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise Edition and migrating to a common PBX system for unified messaging. The company was using a third-party product to provide a message waiting indicator, which alerts users of new voice-mail messages, but the product fell short of expectations. “It’s a feature we need, but that product doesn’t scale well, and scalability is vital for a global enterprise like Medtronic,” says Dechmann.
Since effective communications are critical to operations, Medtronic also wanted to ensure it had an infrastructure that delivered the highest possible availability. The company also needed to maximize security and privacy to comply with partner requests and meet stringent requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Solution
In February 2009, Medtronic began testing Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. The company was interested in giving employees easy access to e-mail, voice mail, instant messaging (IM), and text messages through a single, unified inbox with Exchange Server 2010 and Office Communications Server. Medtronic wanted to use the Voice Mail Preview feature for voice-to-text conversion of voice-mail messages and the new Message Waiting Indicator, which notifies users of new or unread voice mail by lighting the lamp on their desk phone and showing an indicator on their Office Communicator client.
Medtronic also planned to increase availability with the new Database Availability Group feature, which combines on-site and off-site data replication to provide automatic database recovery from disk, server, or data center failures. The company will have a replicated copy of each database on another server in its primary data center and on a standby server in its disaster recovery data center.
In addition, Medtronic wanted to ease administration by using RoleBased Access Control (RBAC) to assign management tasks that relate to users’ specific roles and responsibilities.To more easily comply with regulations, Medtronic hoped to use Transport Protection Rules in Exchange Server 2010. When used with Active Directory® Rights Management Services, Transport Protection Rules make it possible for administrators to automatically apply Information Rights Management protection to e-mail messages after they have been sent. Medtronic can also prevent voice mails from being forwarded to unauthorized people.
Medtronic enlisted the aid of Microsoft Services consultants to help with the implementation at its Minneapolis, Minnesota, headquarters in March 2009. The consultants made sure that Medtronic had all the necessary resources for the deployment and helped the company’s IT staff determine the initial build for testing and production. “We used a planning workbook to ascertain the current environment at Medtronic, its goals, and what the build should be,” says Jeffrey Rosen, Deployment Consultant with Microsoft Services.
Medtronic deployed the Windows Server® 2008 operating system to run Exchange Server 2010 and set up Mailbox, Client Access, Unified Messaging, and Hub Transport servers. Next, the IT staff moved a few user accounts to the Mailbox server and tested mail flow between the company’s three different versions of Exchange Server.
In September 2009, Medtronic migrated the mailboxes for 375 office and mobile users from several business units to the new Exchange Server 2010 environment. “We picked pilot users from a variety of geographical locations, and with varying work habits, to participate in the project,” says Dechmann. “So far, it has been a very seamless transition for the users.”
The office staff uses Exchange Server 2010 to communicate internally and externally throughout the day, while the production-line workers check e-mail messages at shared kiosks. Mobile users are connecting to their e-mail with Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync® and Microsoft Office Outlook Mobile, while portable-computer users are connecting through Outlook Anywhere or Microsoft Outlook Web App. A select group of users were enabled for Exchange Server 2010 Unified Messaging and are using it primarily for Voice Mail Preview.
Medtronic plans to start the enterprisewide rollout of Exchange Server 2010 to support e-mail and voice-mail messagingonce the global architecture and design is finalized.“We have approximately 50 locations that have Exchange Server installations, so it will be a very detailed process,” says Dechmann. The company is still transitioning some locations from Exchange Server 2003 to Exchange Server 2007. Once that is completed, Medtronic will run Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2010 until it is ready to retire the 2007 version. In addition, the company has started deployment of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and Office Communicator 2007 R2 and is continuing its efforts to standardize its PBX systems. Dechmann says, “Whenever one of our company sites is upgraded to the new phone system, we will immediately implement Unified Messaging in Exchange Server 2010 for voice mail.”
Benefits
With Exchange Server 2010, Medtronic has set the stage for an efficient transition to a unified solution for improved communication and collaboration. By implementing Exchange Server 2010, Medtronic will be able to offer its employees greater flexibility in how and where they communicate. The company also expects to increase availability, reduce costs and administration, and improve privacy and security.
Enriched Communication and Collaboration
With Exchange Server 2010, Medtronic employees will be able to access all of their communications from a single location and easily collaborate with one another and with business partners. Features such as the new Message Waiting Indicator help ensure that users don’t miss important calls. “The Message Waiting Indicator was one of the main drivers that prompted us to implement Exchange Server 2010,” says Dechmann. Additionally, users will be able to see the presence status of colleagues through the interoperation between Exchange Server 2010 and Office Communications Server 2007 R2, so they can collaborate more easily. “Employees won’t have to make multiple attempts to contact each other,” says Dechmann. “They will be able to tell instantly when people are available to communicate.”
Greater Work Force Mobility
By implementing Exchange Server 2010, Medtronic is making it easier for employees to work from home or another facility. “That’s a big initiative for us,” says Pam Strickland, IT Manager of Back Office Technology at Medtronic. The company would like to give employees more flexibility to work from home so that it can avoid the need for new office buildings as it expands in the future. The unified communications give users more ways to communicate no matter where they are. Dechmann says, “People can get their e-mail and voice-mail messages through Exchange Server 2010, and take phone calls through Office Communications Server 2007 R2, from anywhere—without having to go through a virtual private network (VPN) to access the systems.”
Higher Availability
Another key factor in the company’s decision to implement Exchange Server 2010 is the high availability that the server offers. With Database Availability Groups, Exchange Server 2010 delivers greater database replication and failover functionality to provide a high level of availability. Dechmann says, “Right now, failover is more of a manual process. We want the automated pieces that Exchange Server 2010 provides to give us better uptime than we currently have.” Because it offers automatic database failover without the complexity of traditional clustering, Exchange Server 2010 can deliver faster failover times and greater overall uptime.
Reduced Costs and Administration
Medtronic has been using a single copy cluster (SCC) configuration, which requires two physical servers for each mailbox server. By replicating databases to other servers in the same data center with Exchange Server 2010, Medtronic can reduce the number of physical servers.Dechmann says, “We’ll be able to have more mailboxes on fewer servers with Exchange Server 2010, which means less hardware to buy and maintain plus reduced power and cooling requirements in the data centers.” In addition, Medtronic will have only one voice-mail system to support instead of several.
The company also expects to save on backup storage costs. Presently, IT staff members have to copy data onto backup tapes and store them off-site. With Exchange Server 2010, they can create multiple replicas of each mailbox database and eliminate the need and cost for storage of backup tapes.
The server’s new RBAC feature provides the added benefit of simpler administration. “With RoleBased Access Control in Exchange Server 2010, we can share some of the duties that currently may reside only in one team, helping reduce the burden of administration for any one group,” Strickland says.
Improved Privacy and Security
By implementing Exchange Server 2010, Medtronic is gaining new security features such as Transport Protection Rules to help it better safeguard sensitive information and stay in compliance with legal mandates. “In the past, we’ve had to rely on third-party products for these features,” says Dechmann. “With Exchange Server 2010, we can set up Transport Protection Rules for things like social security numbers to comply with HIPAA and for voice mails to ensure that they can’t be forwarded outside the company.”
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 can help you achieve better business outcomes while controlling the costs of deployment, administration, and compliance. Exchange Server 2010 delivers the widest range of deployment options, integrated information leakage protection, and advanced compliance capabilities, which combine to form the best messaging and collaboration solution available.
For more information about Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, go to:
For more information about Microsoft unified communications, go to: