2 page Case Study - Posted 7/16/2007

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Orcas Power and Light Cooperative

Electric Utility Reduces IT Support Hours with New Management Tools

Orcas Power and Light Cooperative (OPALCO) provides electricity to San Juan County, Washington. The OPALCO IT department was frustrated with management tools that limited its ability to monitor systems and respond promptly to disruptions. To streamline IT tasks, OPALCO deployed Microsoft® System Center Essentials 2007. Staff can now manage IT inventory from a single location, deploy software updates, and proactively address server issues.

Business Needs

Orcas Power and Light Cooperative (OPALCO) is the electric utility that provides power to about 13,000 residential and business customers spread out over 20 islands in rural San Juan County, Washington State. Based in the town of Eastsound on Orcas Island, the organization has 54 employees spread between its headquarters and two branch offices on San Juan and Lopez islands.

System Center Essentials gives me a complete, integrated solution that helps streamline my daily IT tasks. Brian Longworth Information Systems Specialist, Orcas Power and Light

As a cooperative—a utility that is owned by the customers it serves—OPALCO has tight budgets, and its four-person IT department works with strict limits on the technology and tools that it uses.

Brian Longworth, OPALCO Information Systems Specialist, says that until recently he used a mix of supplemental tools to manage and monitor the IT system. These included the Event Viewer for Windows XP, Windows Server event logs, and a Microsoft® Office Excel® spreadsheet for tracking hardware and software inventory.

“There was no centralized management of any kind, and I was usually not aware of a problem until it happened,” says Longworth. “Once I had a domain controller that ran out of space, and users could not print documents or check e-mail. The server was unresponsive and difficult to reboot because it was so full.

“Had I known, I would have addressed it before it became a problem,” Longworth adds. “When problems happened, management would come to me and say, ‘Why didn’t you know about this?’ Being reactive instead of proactive just isn’t a good approach.”

Solution

To help OPALCO address the limitations of its management tools, Longworth considered several alternatives such as HP OpenView, but found these products to be too expensive and complex for the needs of OPALCO.

“We are a nonprofit organization,” he says, “and we needed a systems-management package that provides the functions we really need for a relatively inexpensive price.”

During a visit to Microsoft, Longworth learned about Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007, a new management solution designed to provide IT professionals in midsize organizations with the tools to help manage their IT infrastructures.

System Center Essentials 2007 helps with common tasks such as troubleshooting end-user problems, automating management tasks, managing multiple systems, and diagnosing and resolving IT problems.

During late 2006, Longworth participated in beta-testing early versions of System Center Essentials 2007. His initial reaction was that the product was easy to configure and use. In early 2007, OPALCO became an early adopter of System Center Essentials 2007, deploying it in a production environment comprised of the IT department and several selected users in the company’s Eastsound headquarters. Deployment only took a few hours, and OPALCO plans to expand the solution to its entire IT system by mid-2007.

Benefits

Even after just a few weeks of experience with System Center Essentials 2007, Longworth is already seeing measurable benefits. “[System Center] Essentials 2007 allows us to manage our network proactively,” Longworth says. “Now I see alerts before a problem is reported, and I can diagnose the problem without touching the machine. These new capabilities are helping me save about 10 to 15 hours per month in support time.”

System Center Essentials 2007 has improved OPALCO’s ability to track hardware and software inventory without a spreadsheet that requires manual data entry. Longworth also uses System Center Essentials 2007 to: monitor servers so that he can find and fix issues before they become problems; check the status of remote desktop and portable computers; and easily distribute applications and security updates—the latter is especially important to comply with strict regulations for electric utilities.

“System Center Essentials gives me a complete, integrated solution that helps streamline my daily IT tasks,” he says.

Easy inventory tasks: With automated hardware and software inventory, Longworth is able to keep better track of the condition of OPALCO servers, desktops, and other IT assets. “The inventory view is incredibly helpful because I can see at a glance the status of any particular machine.”

Better server monitoring: OPALCO is now able to continually monitor its servers, and IT staff can get alerts in the event of a server outage. Says Longworth, “The console is easy to view and it helps me quickly see if we are having disk space issues or any other problems with our servers. This helps me fix any server problems before they start to affect end users—which cuts down on the calls that I have to respond to.”

Improved remote management of desktop and portable computers: With System Center Essentials 2007, Longworth can monitor and diagnose problems right from his desk. “I’m able to monitor a PC’s status remotely without kicking the user off his machine or waiting for a call to report the problem.”

Enhanced update management, software deployment: Longworth can now easily deploy new software or upgrades and deliver security updates and hotfixes to computers. “We recently underwent a security audit, and the outside auditor told me he had never seen a more secure network. I attribute that in large part to the software update capabilities we now have with [System Center] Essentials 2007.”