Case Study

WellPoint uses I/O to manage 2 additional data centers with no additional staff

WellPoint is a leading U.S. health benefits company serving the needs of approximately 34 million members nationwide.

WellPoint's Challenges

WellPoint was merging the operations of three different Blue Cross Blue Shield companies into a single WellPoint operations center. All three centers managed mainframe operations with redundant 7x24x365 staffs and used a hodgepodge of methods to access and monitor mainframe consoles.

WellPoint wanted to increase capacity from 5 mainframe logical partitions to 7 at the largest center in California and merge add the capabilities of 6 additional LPARs from 2 centers in Missouri and Georgia. They also needed a way to suppress console messages as well as a way to highlight critical events for operations staff.

For business continuity reasons, they wished to be able to access the operations center from a mobile disaster recovery center housed in a semi-trailer. They also wanted to move all operations activities and staffing to a single location, closing 2 of the 3 operations centers.

The Solution

Event Management and Automation Increases Operator Capacity

WellPoint began using I/O Concepts solution to suppress messages, highlight events and console consolidation of their mainframe data centers as they implemented an onboard automation system. I/O worked seamlessly with the automation system to easily suppress 85% of their console messages and prioritize the remaining messages. This significantly decreased the workload of the operators who were managing these messages and allowed WellPoint to increase the capacity of three data centers with no additional staff.

Enabling Disaster Recovery Operations

The remote access capabilities and security of the I/O event management solution allows WellPoint staff to access operations consoles from any location. This means that staff from Georgia can access the California operations center and vice versa. The remote capabilities also allow access from any network connection into the data center, even connections from a satellite uplink in a semi-trailer.

Centralizing Data Center Operations

The I/O solution allows access to any data center from any operations center on WellPoint’s network. In this way, WellPoint is able to manage all three data centers from its Missouri operation center. Staffing costs in the Midwest are more cost-effective for WellPoint than in California and Georgia and the central location allows its operators to monitor all three sites during the peak morning hours.

WellPoint's Results:

Suppression of 85% of mainframe events dramatically increased workload capacity of operators

Consolidated staffing to a single midwest location with remote access capabilities to data centers in Georgia and California

Enabled remote access to and from a mobile disaster recovery center

Works seamlessly with their onboard automation system