Customer Case Study
Ardent Health Services
10/28/2006
Healthcare Provider Improves Communication and Collaboration with New Web Portal
With a fast-growing operation that includes 12 hospitals, various medical practices, and about 9,000 employees in 3 states, management at Ardent Health Services has significant challenges in keeping the company's growth on track. An IBM WebSphere-based portal was used to help in that effort, but the IT department found it costly and time-consuming to administer, while most employees found it too complex to be useful. So Ardent, working with Microsoft® solutions provider ComFrame, replaced the WebSphere portal with a solution that uses Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 and related Microsoft technologies. The result is a powerful, scalable, and reliable corporate portal that is easy and cost-effective to administer, and that gives employees a rich, intuitive tool for communicating, collaborating, and sharing documents across a geographically dispersed organization.
Industry: Healthcare
Size: Large, 9000 employees
Country: US  US

Customer Profile
http://www.ardenthealth.com/
Ardent Health Services, based in Tennessee, operates hospitals, physician practices, and a health plan in three states. It employs about 9,000 people and had U.S.$1.7 billion in revenue in 2005.
Business Situation
Ardent had a WebSphere-based portal that was costly to maintain and so complex to navigate that many of the company's employees found it too frustrating to use.
Solution
Ardent deployed a new portal using Microsoft® technology, including Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003, that provides a companywide tool for communicating and sharing documents.
Benefit
  • Easier to manage
  • Rapid return on investment
  • A more cohesive organization
Software
  • Microsoft Active Directory
  • Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005
  • Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2
  • Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services
Quote
"SharePoint Portal Server enables a lot of self-service functions that users can do themselves. That frees our IT staff to focus on projects that can contribute to the longer-term business goals of the company."
Mark Gilliam
Chief Information Officer
Ardent Health Services