Erickson Retirement Communities wanted to improve management of its 4,000 desktop, laptop, and Tablet PCs running on the Windows® XP Service Pack 2 operating system, and to enhance the security of mobile access for HIPAA compliance.

The TCO analysis conducted by IDC indicates that when Erickson upgrades to the Windows Vista™ operating system, it can anticipate annual savings of US$93 per PC in reduced IT support costs and user labor costs. The anticipated savings are:

• IT labor savings of 27 percent, the result of lower IT labor and administrative overhead, valued at $43 per PC per year.
• User labor savings of 25 percent, the result of lower end-user support costs, valued at $50 per PC per year.

Results of the cash flow analysis showed that the deployment cost is $9 per PC. Erickson can pay back its IT investment within an 11.5-month period and have a 202-percent return on investment.

Situation

A leading provider of campus-style retirement living, Erickson Retirement Communities (“Erickson”) has campuses in Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia, with new campuses being developed in the Denver and Kansas City areas. Its communities are home to nearly 20,000 people. A typical campus has 1,500 units with 2,300 residents, supported by 1,300 employees.

Technology signals quality of care to residents. [Windows Vista] has enabled real, and not just perceived, improvement in care given and outcomes achieved. Mark Erickson Chief Operating Officer, Erickson Retirement Communities

Each campus has a full-time IT engineer, but IT operations are managed centrally with a total IT staff of 80 full-time employees (FTEs). Erickson uses the Windows® XP Service Pack 2 operating system to support 3,500 desktops and 500 laptops and Tablet PCs in more than 25 locations with 12 core applications and 12 images. Each campus has about 250 desktops, 50 laptops and Tablet PCs, and four servers. Erickson outsources its help desk to Vis.align, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, with a service-level agreement (SLA) requiring 80 percent of calls to be answered within 90 seconds and resolution of Tier 1 and 2 issues within 24 hours.

Erickson invests heavily in technology, seeing it as a business differentiator and a significant help in recruiting and retaining good IT staff and other personnel. A good example is in eHealth, where Erickson is a leader with the largest network of geriatricians in the country, including 50 on staff, providing a broad set of healthcare options at each community. All care givers, not just doctors, have access to medical data through mobile devices such as Tablet PCs, laptops on carts, and PDAs. Besides helping residents, eHealth allows Erickson to save costs by eliminating paperwork and improving record keeping. Erickson was among the first retirement communities to have 100 percent electronic health records.

Erickson uses Microsoft System Management Server (SMS) to manage all of its clients, and Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) to monitor its 275 servers. IT and business units function as full partners, with all infrastructure and application decisions made jointly. Erickson has standardized security policies, which are enforced corporate-wide. It is also implementing IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) practices and processes. The IT team knows that implementing PC management best practices with the Windows Vista™ operating system will allow for better-managed TCO of the PC environment.

Because of its different types of desktops, laptops and Tablet PCs, Erickson currently has to use a total of 12 images. It takes at least a week to build and test each image, and updating an image can take an additional three to five days. Erickson would like to reduce the number of images and the time taken to build, test, and update each image. It also needs to enhance mobile security for HIPAA compliance.

Solution

In July, the company deployed Windows Vista in a pilot project involving 35 users in three locations. Satisfaction with Windows Vista support during the pilot was rated 5, or excellent, on a scale of 1 to 5. The IT team gave an overall rating of 4, or very high, for satisfaction with the deployment. Overall satisfaction with new and improved tools and resources in Windows Vista, when compared to Windows XP, also achieved the very high rating of 4.

Based on its initial pilot deployment, IDC estimates that it will cost Erickson $9 per PC in IT labor costs to deploy Windows Vista throughout the organization (see Exhibits 1 and 2).

Exhibit 1: ROI Analysis for Windows Vista at Erickson Retirement Communities
Annual benefit	$93
Investment	$9
ROI	202%
Time to pay back	11.5 months
IRR	265%

Exhibit 2: Windows Vista Deployment Cost Per PC
Planning and project management	$3
Application compatibility testing	$2
Application migration	$0
Image installation and PC roll-out	$1
Help desk and IT training	$3
Total Costs per PC	$9

Benefits

IDC's TCO study focused on the value provided by Windows Vista in two key areas: IT labor, which includes cost savings for service desk and desktop engineering and support; and end-user labor, which includes lower support costs and less downtime.

Based on an analysis of current desktop support operations and the results of its Windows Vista trial, Erickson can anticipate reducing annual IT labor support costs by $43 per desktop overall, including $35 for service desk and $9 for desktop engineering (see Exhibit 3). End-user time spent in self service tasks will be reduced by 25 percent, generating $50 per PC annually in user productivity savings.

For the IT staff the major benefits of Windows Vista include improved image management; one-touch deployment, which saves users and IT staff considerable time; and the Windows BitLocker™ Drive Encryption data encryption capability.

BitLocker is a data-protection feature available in Windows Vista Enterprise and Ultimate for client computers, and in Windows Server "Longhorn." It helps safeguard sensitive field data in the event of loss or theft of a computer. BitLocker also helps prevent an unauthorized user who boots another operating system or runs a software hacking tool from breaking Windows Vista file and system protections or from performing offline viewing of the files stored on the protected drive.

Security of information is very important to Erickson because of HIPAA compliance. BitLocker data encryption is a huge benefit since data resides temporarily on clients before it is stored on the servers. Having powerful and easy-to-use encryption on laptops is critical. The company will save hundreds of thousands of dollars by using BitLocker because it will not have to buy a third-party encryption solution. Erickson will also be able to save on additional investment by replacing third-party anti-virus and anti-spyware software with features included with Windows Vista.

Image Management

A major benefit of employing Windows Vista will be the timesavings gained in the creation and maintenance of images and the number of images required. Since images are hardware-agnostic with Windows Vista, Erickson will only need two images in future. The company will reduce the time to create and test a new image to six to eight hours and will cut the time to update the image to less than a day.

According to Scott Erickson, the company’s Chief Technology Officer, the current process for imaging is not only time consuming but prone to errors. Automation and scripting features with Windows Vista will help make the process easier, faster, and potentially error-free. He points out that help desk personnel, who often need to re-image a client to fix a problem, will find this much easier to do remotely with one standard image.

In addition, Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) brings automation to image development and deployment. The User State Migration Tool (USMT) can be customized to capture and restore whatever is needed. It automatically captures the user state on machines and restores end user and program settings. Image deployment without user-state settings saves 30 to 40 minutes.

Windows Vista also allows the central management of Group Policy with a great deal of flexibility and options for what to manage, including power settings.  With Group Policy Objects, Erickson’s IT group will be able to set multiple user settings on shared PCs. Users will not have to call the service desk every time they need to make changes to user PC settings.

Slava Besser, Network Administrator, has found Windows Vista tools to be better and more user friendly than current ones. Help desk staff can kick off automated processes to fix, backup, re-image, and restore user states, and issues can be resolved by phone rather than having to send a person to the remote site.

CIO Steve Dollase also sees the reduction of the amount of IT labor needed to operate the company’s IT platform as a major benefit of Windows Vista. In addition, he views the support for more secure mobile access in Windows Vista as particularly important, because it allows caregivers to spend more time with patients, providing better care. For instance, mobile access at the point of care allows the checking of prescribed drugs to make sure they don’t interact dangerously with other prescriptions.

User Benefits

Users like the new features, especially the User Account Control (UAC, which warns against unauthorized actions so that the user can help prevent them. The main role of UAC is to deliver a more secure desktop. By making the standard user mode the default, UAC helps reduce the exposure and attack surface of the operating system.

Martin Rayner, Director of IT, finds the user interface more user-friendly, and he likes the ability to move between screens and switch profiles without logging out and having to lose the initial session. He also appreciates the improved ability to pick up wireless signals more readily at more locations and to have the system self-configure to access the various wireless networks.

Exhibit 3: Windows Vista Deployment Cost and Benefits Per PC
Labor Benefits	Windows XP	Windows Vista	Change
IT Labor
Service Desk	$120	$84	29.7%
Desktop Engineering	$40	$32	19.4%
Total IT Labor	$160	$117	27%
End User Labor
Self Support of PCs	$198	$148	25%
Downtime	$0	$0
Total End User Labor	$198	$148	25%
Cost Benefit Analysis
Total Annual Benefit			$93
Cost to Deploy Windows Vista			$9

IT Labor – Annual IT full-time equivalent (FTE) cost for service desk (Tier 0 to 3), and desktop engineering and support.

User Labor – Annual cost for end users maintaining their own PCs through troubleshooting, installing and configuring software and/or software updates, data management (backup and restore), recreating lost work, and downtime.

User Productivity - Annual end user time saved by reducing the time to perform business-specific tasks.

Outlook

As a technologist, CTO Scott Erickson enjoys being an early adopter and bringing cutting-edge technology to the company. Besides the productivity benefits of one-touch deployment and imaging, he feels that Windows Vista elevates the IT organization in the eyes of the rest of the company and helps to recruit and retain hard-to-find IT professionals.

The company’s rollout plan for Windows Vista is to address usability and user interface issues before initially deploying 100 PCs each to three new communities. Users will be in different work areas to provide broad feedback. The goal is to have light touch deployment that takes less than 30 minutes, and to reduce break-fix time by 75 percent.

Erickson executives have been using Windows Vista to become familiar with its features before it is fully deployed. Mark Erickson, Chief Operating Officer, likes the new user interface and navigation features, and the way messaging has been integrated into the desktop. He believes the new operating system will provide a solid foundation for improving communications and collaboration among employees, including integration with Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server, the Microsoft Office suites, and Microsoft Office Communications Server. “Technology signals quality of care to residents. [Windows Vista] has enabled real, and not just perceived, improvement in care given and outcomes achieved,” Erickson concludes.

Windows Vista
Windows Vista can help your organization use information technology to gain a competitive advantage in today’s new world of work. Your people will be able to find and use information more effectively. You will be able to support your mobile work force with better access to shared data and collaboration tools. And your IT staff will have better tools and technologies to enhance corporate IT security, data protection, and more efficient deployment and management.

For more information about Windows Vista, go to:
www.microsoft.com/windowsvista

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 Vis.align products and services, call (484) 636-3000 or visit the Web site at:
www.visalign.com

For more information about Erickson Retirement Communities products and services, call (410) 242-2880 or visit the Web site at:
www.ericksoncommunities.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

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