4-page Case Study - Posted 6/21/2007

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HDR

Firm Saves 60 Percent by Acquiring Multiple Integrated Server Products Under One License

Architectural, engineering, and consulting firm HDR wanted a more secure, efficient, and easy-to-use collaboration environment to make the best use of its people, intellectual property, and client relationships as it grew and expanded geographically. To achieve that goal, the firm built an intranet portal with Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 to support real-time collaboration, workflow processes, and document control. HDR chose to further expand its work-sharing capabilities by investing in the Microsoft Enterprise Client Access License (CAL) Suite that covers key technologies that enhance HDR’s communication, collaboration, and security infrastructure, under a single license. With the Enterprise CAL Suite, HDR virtual teams work more efficiently, and the firm simplifies license management and saves approximately 60 percent of the cost of the individual product licenses.

Situation

Since its founding in 1917, HDR has evolved into a community of architectural and engineering experts focused on developing innovative ways to serve clients. In addition to architectural and engineering design consulting, HDR offers a large and growing menu of services in planning, design-build, environmental sciences, security systems, and public and private management consulting. It has completed projects in all 50 U.S. states and 40 other countries, ranging from designing silicon wafer fabrication plants to restoring wetland habitats.

Through this vast experience, HDR has developed full life-cycle architectural and engineering solutions to help its government and private sector clients address complex technical, economic, and environmental challenges. Eighty percent of the firm’s business comes from repeat clients, with HDR ranking high among architecture and engineering firms in transportation, water, environmental and resource management, health care, civic, and science and industry.

Headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, HDR has more than 6,000 staffers in more than 140 offices worldwide. Its employee-owned structure fosters a strong entrepreneurial spirit among its workers. In fact, many company initiatives for new services or improvements to existing processes have come from individual employees.

Geographically Dispersed Teams

Since the mid-1990s, HDR has experienced tremendous growth both from increased business and new acquisitions. Project teams typically include architecture and engineering experts from all over the United States. So HDR depends heavily on “work sharing” to support collaboration among these geographically dispersed teams. Team members must be able to share files, communicate efficiently, and access systems and resources from virtually anywhere in the world.

Over the years, the HDR work-sharing process evolved from routing hard-copy documents and drawings to publishing materials on File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sites and communicating through e-mail, voice mail, video-conferencing, and teleconferencing. The company implemented Microsoft® SharePoint® Portal Server version 2.0 to create team sites for individual projects and then in 2005 upgraded to Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003. By 2006, the firm had more than 360 team sites, referred to internally as “the maze,” each with a separate information store.

In 2007, HDR decided that the time had come to create an enterprisewide collaboration portal to support better information sharing across departments, disciplines, and geographic locations. “As we grow, we’re acquiring other companies, and the difficulties of blending all the different Web sites and locations—and dealing with cultural and physical differences between the merged organizations—led us to look for a more integrated collaboration solution that would support our goal of building one great sustainable company,” says Angelo Privetera, Vice President and Chief Information Officer at HDR.

Need to Streamline Flow of Information

HDR determined that the new collaboration solution needed to:

• Provide authorized users with easy, secure, and quick access to documents regardless of where they were stored.
• Support real-time communication and collaboration.
• Organize information into logical communities.
• Enhance use and reuse of information and materials.
• Eliminate unnecessary large file transfers and paper documentation.
• Support workflow and document versioning.

“Our goal is to make it easier to find information and access useful materials with fewer clicks, while enhancing security and performance,” says Privetera. “We want to streamline the flow of information between people, systems, and processes, and transform the way that people use information to drive informed, creative decision making.”

Solution

HDR had been using Microsoft server and desktop software since 1995 and signed a new Microsoft Enterprise Agreement in fall 2006. At one point, HDR evaluated Plumtree enterprise portal software but decided that, rather than combining products from multiple vendors, it would go with an integrated group of software products from a single vendor.

So HDR turned to its Microsoft account team for input on how to build a collaboration solution that would best meet its growing needs. The account team reinforced HDR’s belief that Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 could support the company’s stated business needs with:

• Real-time communications.
• The ability to work with corporate enterprise data from within Microsoft Office programs.
• Enterprisewide search capabilities.
• Business intelligence tools to analyze and monitor business processes.
• Workflow support.

After evaluating the software, HDR concluded that Office SharePoint Server 2007 met the company’s additional requirements for scalability, ease of use, and easy integration with HDR’s existing computer-aided design (CAD) and project management software. In addition, strong Kerberos support and tight integration with the Active Directory® service, a component of the Windows Server® 2003 operating system, helped satisfy security concerns.

“Based on all the real-time capabilities and business data search functionality in Office SharePoint Server 2007, we felt that it would provide the tools that we need to improve work sharing for our geographically dispersed teams,” says Privetera.

It took just four months to set up the extensive new intranet portal on six server computers, which are clustered and load balanced for high availability and failover. The HDR portal is a repository for:

• Microsoft Office documents.
• Portable Document Format files (PDFs) of benefit information, organizational charts, training materials, project documentation, and photographic images of best practices for developing project sites.
• Project sites where project team members can collaborate in real time and route documents for review and approval using the workflow tools included with Office SharePoint Server 2007.

The intranet content is organized by subject so that multiple resources of similar information are combined in a single location. The HDR Portal Services Team has established policies to eliminate duplicate and inaccurate data and ensure that content owners continue to maintain the data or remove it from the site.

The Enterprise CAL Suite specifically addresses our needs for business intelligence, collaboration, content management, and security…. The suite reduces immediate costs and the total cost of ownership. Angelo Privetera Vice President and Chief Information Officer, HDR

However, the solution does not stop there. “When we started down the path to Office SharePoint Server 2007, we discovered features in other Microsoft enterprise server software that we will need in the near future, such as unified messaging, hosted secure e mail filtering, rights management, and Web conferencing, which led us to the Enterprise Client Access License Suite,” says Privetera.

HDR acquired the Enterprise Client Access License (CAL) Suite at significant savings through its Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft. HDR already had the Microsoft Core CAL Suite—with four foundational server products that provide identity management, enterprise communication, collaborative workspaces, and asset management, so it added the Enterprise CAL “step-up” package, which provides HDR workers with access to seven additional server products.

The additional products offer advanced infrastructure capabilities, which HDR will need as it moves forward. These capabilities include information rights management; unified messaging and compliance; Web-based forms; spreadsheet publishing; business data search; Web conferencing; client, server, and edge security; and more.

In the near future, HDR plans to deploy Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise to take advantage of the unified messaging functionality that combines voice mail, e-mail, faxes, and calendaring in the same inbox. The company also plans to set up external SharePoint sites to support collaboration with partners and to post public information related to government projects. HDR will be able to manage and allow access to necessary public information while safeguarding confidential data using the Microsoft Forefront™ Security Suite and Windows® Rights Management Services.

Benefits

By creating a secure, easy-to-use collaboration portal based on Office SharePoint Server 2007 and implementing other integrated components of the Enterprise CAL Suite, HDR expects to empower information workers and increase its competitive advantage. In the process, it will save licensing and integration costs, simplify license management, and reduce the need for third-party software.

Competitive Advantage

Efficient work sharing gives HDR a competitive advantage because the firm can have different types of expertise in each of its locations and apply those skills to projects anywhere in the organization as needed. “The Enterprise CAL Suite, by supporting all of our work-sharing needs, provides the staff with capabilities that will transform our business by eliminating the barriers between organizations, systems, processes, and forms of communication,” says Privetera. “We can communicate and collaborate instantly with colleagues, customers, and business partners around the world.”

Although HDR has just implemented the initial phase of the SharePoint-based portal, the firm expects the increased access to essential design information and business resources, inside and outside the office, will help increase productivity and enhance creativity. Eliminating duplicate or inaccurate content increases the integrity of the information and helps ensure faster, more accurate search results. Organizing the information by content type also helps expedite retrieval time.

Together, these improvements will help accelerate HDR’s responses to requests for proposals (RFPs). “Workers generating the responses to the RFPs are able to retrieve the necessary information more quickly and know that the information is accurate and current, which eliminates the potential for rework due to invalid data,” says Privetera.

The portal also helps the mobile work force collaborate more effectively. HDR employees frequently work on multiple projects in multiple locations requiring a great deal of travel. The portal ensures that those workers can access project information at any time from anywhere, and easily collaborate with other team members all over the world.

Empowered Information Workers

By employing the easy-to-use site-creation tools in Office SharePoint Server 2007, together with Forefront and Active Directory, HDR can give authorized users site-creation privileges. “Team leaders will be able to set up a project site and set access for those they need to collaborate with,” says Privetera. “It’s really putting the power back into the hands of individuals at the project level. They can create collaboration sites quickly and easily, using predefined team site templates that ensure a more consistent user experience, without requiring IT assistance.”

60 Percent Savings on License Costs

With the Enterprise CAL Suite, HDR can cost-effectively implement communication, collaboration, and security technologies as needed while saving about 60 percent of the cost of acquiring the individual product licenses. Although HDR already had realized significant savings through the volume licensing terms of its Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, acquiring the Enterprise CAL Suite further enhanced those savings.

Even more important, the Enterprise CAL Suite provides multiple integrated server capabilities through one license. “The Enterprise CAL Suite specifically addresses our needs for business intelligence, collaboration, content management, and security,” says Privetera. “These technologies are already integrated with each other and with desktop applications, so the suite reduces immediate costs and the total cost of ownership because we don’t have to bring on a team of 10 or 15 people to integrate them.”

Simplified License Management

The Enterprise Agreement already had greatly reduced HDR’s time spent acquiring and managing product licenses, and the Enterprise CAL Suite extends that benefit. “With 140 offices and people moving around so much, we would have a hard time trying to manage software licenses without an Enterprise Agreement, where all we have to do is count heads for an annual accounting of our actual license use,” Privetera explains. “The Enterprise CAL Suite extends the concept of the Enterprise Agreement and makes it even simpler because we have the rights to use 11 products with a single license and deploy them as we need them.”

Reduced Third-Party Software Costs

The comprehensive set of enterprise software available through the Enterprise CAL Suite is expected to reduce the need for third-party software. For example, HDR will replace its Google Search Appliance with the Enterprise Search capability of Office SharePoint Server 2007. “Enterprise Search provides more capabilities than the Google Search Appliance,” says Nicole Becker, Director at HDR. “It gives us the capability to run a search across our entire portal, including My Sites and legacy applications, and it respects the security and access privileges assigned to the source information and content. We can also pull employee information from Active Directory, which we couldn’t do before.”

Similarly, the Forefront Security Suite—with desktop security and targeted protection for specific Microsoft server applications—will help eliminate the need for multiple third-party security software solutions.
 
Microsoft Volume Licensing
Microsoft Volume Licensing offers customized programs that are designed to meet the needs of your business. Tailored for companies of different sizes and purchasing preferences, these Volume Licensing programs provide simple, flexible, and affordable solutions that can help you manage your licenses with ease. Whether you have five or thousands of desktop PCs, Microsoft Volume Licensing has the right program for you.

To acquire the latest Microsoft technology at a significant cost savings through Microsoft Volume Licensing, contact your Microsoft Partner or local reseller.

To learn more about Microsoft Volume Licensing, visit:
www.microsoft.com/licensing

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about HDR products and services, call (402) 399-1000 or visit the Web site at:
www.hdrinc.com