Evernorth builds new storage system capabilities with IBM OMEGAMON
Today, patients and healthcare service providers are feeling the impact of rising healthcare costs. Healthcare service providers, in particular, are seeing substantial spikes in IT expenses, especially in specialty storage monitoring.
Evernorth Health Services, a leading pharmacy, care and benefits solutions provider, faced rapidly rising storage monitoring costs, driven by steep price hikes from their existing storage provider. The storage systems team, responsible for maintaining data integrity and appropriate usage, faced the direct impact of these technical limitations. The stakes were high. The inability to effectively manage these aspects hindered operations and decision-making processes. These challenges could lead to financial strain and potential data integrity issues, threatening the company’s reputation and operational efficiency.
Evernorth’s CIO Office recognized the urgent need for a more scalable, flexible and cost-effective monitoring solution. The company specifically required a system that could monitor datasets from all sources, eliminate scheduling overhead and filter data quickly.
Single monitoring tool, full storage visibility
for 4M DASD, 30M DFHSM, 2.6M tape datasets environment
Automation, alerting and viewing features
empower users to create and save custom views with detailed filtering and layout design options
Automated system scanning capability
built into the IT environment
Evernorth chose IBM and Rocket Software, an IBM Platinum Business Partner, as their trusted partners to leverage their deep expertise in mainframe storage. The healthcare service provider was confident that the IBM® OMEGAMON® for Storage on z/OS® solution would deliver cost savings and enhanced performance by offering greater scalability, flexibility and near real-time data access.
IBM, along with Rocket Software, developed a solution with new features and capabilities tailored to Evernorth’s requirements. The solution’s ability to process data faster and provide near real-time insights significantly improved the health service provider’s responsiveness and problem prevention strategy.
The implementation involved planning, testing, designing, developing and deploying the solution within an aggressive nine-month timeline. The solution seamlessly integrated with Evernorth’s existing removable media manager (RMM) and hierarchical storage manager (HSM) data, strengthening their dataset services (DSS) functionality and enhancing reporting capabilities.
Evernorth’s IT storage team, developers and executives now benefit from improved efficiency and near real-time data access. The solution has addressed the Evernorth CIO Office’s immediate financial concerns and positioned the company for long-term success by enabling capacity planning reports and forecasting CAPEX investments in new storage based on growth trends.
The new system has fulfilled Evernorth’s requirements, enabling efficient dataset management from all sources, and automated data collection. It offers automated reporting through OMEGAMON Situations and provides quick access to data for non-technical employees through the real-time dataset metrics (RDM) viewer. Moreover, the system also filters data quickly, enhancing operational efficiency and decision-making processes.
James Cotter, Mainframe Storage Leader at Evernorth Health Services, highlighted the impact of the transition, stating, “We use the [IBM] OMEGAMON products because they are a great tool for hardware replacements or hardware refreshes. It allows us to track performance and gather various statistics before and after switching from old to new hardware.”
The solution’s near real-time data capabilities, in stark contrast to the previous system’s scheduled collections, have empowered Evernorth’s team to respond swiftly to potential issues, preventing problems and ensuring data integrity. Integrating OMEGAMON with existing systems, such as DFSMSrmm and the IBM Resource Access Control Facility (RACF®) security solution, further bolsters its value, providing a unified view of storage data.
Looking ahead, Evernorth plans to leverage the enhanced capabilities of IBM OMEGAMON to drive further improvements in capacity planning, forecasting CAPEX investments and fostering a more data-driven culture. Their partnership with IBM, marked by responsive development, continues to be a cornerstone of Evernorth’s storage management strategy.
The collaboration between Evernorth, IBM and Rocket Software has resulted in a robust, scalable and cost-effective storage monitoring solution that serves Evernorth’s business needs well into the future.
Evernorth Health Services, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, is a leading pharmacy, care and benefits solution provider. Established with a mission to improve health and increase vitality, Evernorth serves millions by making the prediction, prevention and treatment of illnesses and diseases more accessible. The company’s capabilities are bolstered by their medical subsidiaries, including Express Scripts, Accredo, eviCore and MDLIVE, along with holistic Evernorth platforms and solutions. Evernorth is a subsidiary of Cigna Corporation, a global health service company with a significant presence in the healthcare industry.
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