ClearBenefits Improves Reliability and Business Continuity with Dimension Data - Case Study
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ClearBenefits Automates the Employee Benefits Enrollment Process Founded in 1999, ClearBenefits has more than a decade of experience providing best-of-breed benefits management technology, support, and integrated administration services that support the delivery of benefits for over 150,000 employees. Customers include industry leaders such as Lam Research, General Atomics, Equinix, Blue Shield of California, and Sutter Health. ClearBenefits’ technology and services packages are fully integrated to provide end-to-end benefits outsourcing for employers of all sizes. ClearBenefits automates the time- consuming and complex world of health plan administration, through a rules-based system that guides employees step by step through the enrolment process via an intuitive online portal that facilitates information sharing between employers, insurance carriers and other stakeholders. The company also manages the annual employee enrolment process as well as life-event changes throughout the year. Challenge: Increasing Reliability and Availability Historically, ClearBenefits outsourced its IT services to support its business and the Benefits Platform application. As the demands for uptime and service quality for servers, storage and networking devices grew, so did the complexities with managing the entire infrastructure for service-driven performance. ClearBenefits Improves Reliability and Business Continuity with Dimension Data case study “We didn’t have the desired visibility over the process of installing, managing, and maintaining the hardware and software, and another challenge was monitoring and uptime measurements,” says Frank Dellé, Director of Systems and Security. By 2009, it became clear the company was interested in raising performance levels and reducing service interruptions due to multiple single points of failure. “It wasn’t pretty giving root cause analysis reports to our executive team. The unified concern was the potential negative impact to the perception of ClearBenefits,” says Dellé. At that point the forecast to grow and to meet the demands of an expanding client base made it clear to seek another direction. Solution ClearBenefits searched the managed hosting services market for a provider that could offer a high level of reliability and management skills. One of the providers they evaluated was Dimension Data . “Dimension Data demonstrated the highest level of service with a 100% uptime guarantee, which was a major selling point,” says Dellé. “They also offered to partner with us to create the best solution for our business. In addition, Dimension Data provided a level of service and attention that we didn’t think we’d get with a large provider like IBM.” industry: Professional Services country: United States business challenge: Complexities associated with managing an entire infrastructure for service-driven performance. Lack of visibility over the process of installing, managing, and maintaining the hardware and software. solution: Appoint a SaaS and cloud hosting provider that can deliver higher reliability and enable cost-effective business continuity services: Dimension Data Managed Hosting with Application Operations, Cloud Hosting, and Cloud-based Disaster Recovery results: • Internal efficiencies that allow ClearBenefits’ small team to become more productive and proactive • Flexibility to accommodate requests, technical and operational expertise, and professional deployment of services for new requests • Ability to manage to seasonal peak performance
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Founded in 1999, ClearBenefits has more than a decade of experience providing best-of-breed benefits management technology, support, and integrated administration services that support the delivery of benefits for over 150,000 employees. Customers include industry leaders such as Lam Research, General Atomics, Equinix, Blue Shield of California, and Sutter Health. ClearBenefits’ technology and services packages are fully integrated to provide end-to-end benefits outsourcing for employers of all sizes. ClearBenefits automates the timeconsuming and complex world of health plan administration, through a rules-based system that guides employees step by step through the enrolment process via an intuitive online portal that facilitates information sharing between employers, insurance carriers and other stakeholders. The company also manages the annual employee enrolment process as well as life-event changes throughout the year.
Transcript of ClearBenefits Improves Reliability and Business Continuity with Dimension Data - Case Study
ClearBenefits Automates the Employee Benefits Enrollment ProcessFounded in 1999, ClearBenefits has more than a decade of experience providing best-of-breed benefits management technology, support, and integrated administration services that support the delivery of benefits for over 150,000 employees. Customers include industry leaders such as Lam Research, General Atomics, Equinix, Blue Shield of California, and Sutter Health. ClearBenefits’ technology and services packages are fully integrated to provide end-to-end benefits outsourcing for employers of all sizes.
ClearBenefits automates the time-consuming and complex world of health plan administration, through a rules-based system that guides employees step by step through the enrolment process via an intuitive online portal that facilitates information sharing between employers, insurance carriers and other stakeholders.
The company also manages the annual employee enrolment process as well as life-event changes throughout the year.
Challenge: Increasing Reliability and AvailabilityHistorically, ClearBenefits outsourced its IT services to support its business and the Benefits Platform application. As the demands for uptime and service quality for servers, storage and networking devices grew, so did the complexities with managing the entire infrastructure for service-driven performance.
ClearBenefits Improves Reliability andBusiness Continuity with Dimension Data
case study
“We didn’t have the desired visibility over the process of installing, managing, and maintaining the hardware and software, and another challenge was monitoring and uptime measurements,”
says Frank Dellé, Director of Systems and Security.
By 2009, it became clear the company was interested in raising performance levels and reducing service interruptions due to multiple single points of failure.
“It wasn’t pretty giving root cause analysis reports to our executive team. The unified concern was the potential negative impact to the perception of ClearBenefits,” says Dellé.
At that point the forecast to grow and to meet the demands of an expanding client base made it clear to seek another direction.
SolutionClearBenefits searched the managed hosting services market for a provider that could offer a high level of reliability and management skills. One of the providers they evaluated was Dimension Data .
“Dimension Data demonstrated the highest level of service with a 100% uptime guarantee, which was a major selling point,” says Dellé. “They also offered to partner with us to create the best solution for our business. In addition, Dimension Data provided a level of service and attention that we didn’t think we’d get with a large provider like IBM.”
industry: Professional Services
country: United States
business challenge: Complexities associated with managing an entire infrastructure for service-driven performance. Lack of visibility over the process of installing, managing, and maintaining the hardware and software.
solution:Appoint a SaaS and cloud hosting provider that can deliver higher reliability and enable cost-effective business continuity
services:Dimension Data Managed Hosting with Application Operations, Cloud Hosting, and Cloud-based Disaster Recovery
results:• Internal efficiencies that allow
ClearBenefits’ small team to become more productive and proactive
• Flexibility to accommodate requests, technical and operational expertise, and professional deployment of services for new requests
•Ability to manage to seasonal peak performance
case study
ClearBenefits chose Dimension Data Managed Hosting in late 2009. ClearBenefits operates a traditional infrastructure with a multi-tiered network that spans from front-end load balancers through a DMZ containing the web servers to a secured back-end network where the database resides. VPNs connect various sites to the back-end.
“That stack is entirely managed by Dimension Data ,” says Dellé.
Dimension Data provides performance monitoring, OS patch management, security management, hardware deployment, and much of the application deployment.
“We have a robust and mature process for handing off major software release updates to Dimension Data .”
Dellé also makes use of all of the native support tools provided by Dimension Data , including the trouble ticketing portal. More recently, ClearBenefits turned to Dimension Data to provide on-demand business continuity capabilities. Dimension Data helped ClearBenefits set up a hybrid cloud using its cloud offering for the public-facing front end, and a private database back-end. The business continuity site is hosted separately from their primary site. Data updates are shipped to the site daily. If a catastrophic failure occurs at the primary site, the cloud infrastructure at the secondary site can be activated in less than 24 hours.
“It’s very cost-effective,” says Dellé. “We don’t pay for any ongoing management costs except reserving hardware and pre-configured cloud instances.”
ClearBenefits brings up the secondary site several times a year for testing, refreshing the database, and upgrading the ClearBenefits application software to the latest release.
Impact: Reliability, Security, and ProductivityMoving to Dimension Data has had a dramatic effect on the reliability and availability of ClearBenefits’ SaaS application.
“Before Dimension Data we were able to offer an SLA of just 95%. Today we have a stable site and deliver an uptime of 99.9%, which is a testament to Dimension Data ,” says Dellé.
Handling personal health information for 150,000 individuals is a big responsibility. ClearBenefits must comply with Heath Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations.
“The security requirements are strict,” says Dellé.“ Dimension Data helps us meet them with its SAS70 Type II and HIPAA Business Associate certifications.”
The recent addition of Dimension Data Cloud-based Disaster Recovery services has allowed ClearBenefits to put in place a business continuity strategy that meets their clients’ requirements at a price one-tenth the cost of a typical business continuity implementation.
Leveraging Dimension Data has led to internal efficiencies that allow ClearBenefits’ small team to become more productive and proactive. Dellé credits Dimension Data with the flexibility to accommodate requests, technical and operational expertise, and professional deployment of services for new requests.
”Dimension Data has enabled ClearBenefits to manage to seasonal peak performance.”
For further information visit: www.dimensiondata.com/solutionsCS / 09/12 © Copyright Dimension Data 2012
“Dimension Data demonstrated the highest level of service with a 100% uptime guarantee, which was a big selling point. They also had a very accommodating process by which we could work together in a partnership.” Frank Dellé, Director of Systems and Security
