Microsoft call from Health A

By ADAM GIFFORD

Shared services company Health Alliance has called for proposals to move the server and desktop environment at Waitemata Health and Counties Manukau Health to a common Microsoft platform.

Infrastructure planning manager Alistair Neave said Hewlett Packard, Unisys and Gen-i have been asked to give a price for the infrastructure improvement project.

The bid does not include hardware as Hewlett Packard is already the preferred hardware supplier for the hospitals and ran the scoping project.

The two hospital groups have just over 4000 PCs and laptops which are supported by Health Alliance's 85 IT staff.

Health Alliance was set up to align infrastructure at Waitemata and Counties Manukau and ensure projects and project costs are shared.

The infrastructure improvement project is actually six projects which are to be done as one programme of work.

The mail servers for the two organisations and Health Alliance will be upgraded to Exchange 2000 and merged into a single organisation.

Neave said this should allow some consolidation of mail servers.

It will also give users a single view of the address book and resources, allowing them to book resources or meetings in all locations.

Identity systems will be merged using Microsoft Active Directory to give users a single portable login across the sites.

The other projects are where real cost savings are expected, starting with the design of a standard server platform in readiness for an aggressive programme of server consolidation on Windows 2003.

A common standard desktop will be developed and deployed to all sites based on Windows XP.

Neave said this would allow the organisations to get six years of use out of PCs.

The upgrade will also include merging the present desktop and server management tools to provide a single infrastructure for remote management and deployment of software.