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Client Name: Department of Health


The UK Department of Health implements open source software to deliver an enterprise employee intranet

 

The delivered solution provides annual cost savings of over £5 million – Department of Health

 

This case demonstrates 1Tech's expertise in delivering open source portal solutions whilst integrating other enterprise systems. Portal solutions are becoming a commonplace way of delivering unified information services across a number of channels.

 

In today's competitive and ever-growing market, it takes more than just having various applications in the right place. To carry out business successfully, the most essential and needed element is to bring multiple resources of enterprises and people together making them responsible, accountable and traceable. The amount of electronic information is ever increasing. The Department of Health portal enables ‘filtering' electronic information and business systems' functionality relevant to user needs.

The Company

Our client; the Department of Health is one of the largest government departments in the UK. The Department of Health's overall purpose is to ensure better health and well-being, better care and better value for all. They have responsibility for standards of health care in the country, including the NHS. They are responsible for finding the best way to develop, support and mobilise the health and social care system to deliver improvements for patients and the public.

The Problem

The Department of Health asked 1Tech to provide a solution that could streamline their existing business processes and at the same time make the most of their ever reducing workforce maximising the potential of existing information systems. Due to a high turnover of staff they needed to ensure that lesser skilled employees could perform various job functions with little knowledge of existing business processes and systems. Upon selection of the open source portal Liferay, 1Tech were required to architect, design, integrate and deliver a solution to meet the following key requirements:

  • Streamline existing DH business processes and enable employees and partners to be more efficient in their work practices
  • Secure and consolidate user information across the organisation
  • Enable DH employees to our internal services through a multitude of channels
  • Provide collaboration and content management for all employees
  • Ensure the system can be used by other partners/agencies in the future
  • Maximise and make available the information held within existing information systems

The Solution

  • Portal product evaluation, options assessment and procurement including definition of portal product requirements
  • Business case and portal delivery strategy
  • Perform detailed requirements analysis upon which areas of the organisation's IT architecture would be impacted by a portal implementation
  • Perform a detailed options analysis of open source solutions to determine the most appropriate components.
  • The solution included an assembly of the following key open source components:
    • Liferay (Enterprise Portal)
    • Liferay (Forums/Wikis)
    • Mule ESB (Integration)
    • PostgreSQL (Database)
    • Apache HTTP (Web Server)
    • Lucene (Search)
    • Eclipse Software (Development Environment)
  • The open source components were integrated with the following commercial vendor software:
    • IBM WebSphere Application Server
    • IBM WCM (Content Management)
    • Oracle HR and Finance (ERP Systems)
    • IBM Lotus Notes (Legacy Information)
    • IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer Software (Development Environment)
    • Other Business Applications (MicroSoft ASP/.Net and Java)
  • Architecture, design and implementation of all open source and closed system components
  • Design and development of an enterprise search, taxonomy and knowledge management services within the portal. Fully developed from open source software enabling employees to quickly find information

The Result

  • 1Tech were able to deliver an end to end solution meeting all requirements and integrating with all internal systems
  • User friendly solution within 6 months using 1Tech's assured open source integration methodology (1TechOSIM) based on RUP
  • Single point of access to any electronic information within the organisation
  • Streamlining of business processes leading to 5 million pounds annual efficiencies in productivity
  • Open standards based portal, ESB, database, search and application server architecture preventing vendor lock in
  • Ability to easily extend portal services to other partners and agencies in the future
  • Consolidated user identity management
  • Minimisation of information duplication
  • Faster staff induction/team establishment
  • Improved functional integration between teams and departments
  • Cost avoidance due to improved security management
  • Increased return on assets from systems previously limited in access
  • The Department of Health is discovering another advantage of 1Tech's open source assembly: it can be reused and adapted to address similar needs. DH are examining ways to leverage the assembly stack to support its internal community, using the same components for blogging and social networking
Conclusion

1Tech rapidly assembles web-based solutions based on client requirements from the most proven and client-preferred software, open source components and web services to increase client agility. 1Tech created the DH employee intranet as an enterprise 2.0 assembly: a loosely coupled architecture that integrates open source components such as content management, forums, blogging and other functions to fit the DH's needs and preferences. The increased productivity from rapidly being able to locate information in one place has provided massive benefits and hard cash savings of around £5 million per year.

 

All employees can now perform core business procedures in much quicker time, with minimum skills applied. This is a showcase example of how 1Tech have introduced open source software and helped customers save money. 1Tech also demonstrate vast experience in integrating open source and closed source commercial software.

 

Liferay (http://www.liferay.com/) is 1Tech's preferred open source portal solution. Liferay is the leading open source portal based on the JEE platform with over 60 portlets out of the box and the most innovative technologies to let you do everything from web publishing, to building an intranet, to simply getting the right documents and applications to the right people.

 

1Tech are able to leverage over many experiences of implementing open source portals. 1Tech are a certified Liferay services partner ensuring high quality and cost effective delivery of open source portal solutions. 1Tech's unequivocal industrial strength open source portal and Liferay design and implementation knowledge ensured that the final solution was delivered on time and within the client's budget.

 

For further information on our portal solutions please visit: http://www.1tech.eu/solutions/suites/portal