Shoppers Drug Mart prescribes patch management overhaul
Toronto, Ontario (June 14, 2005): Canada's largest pharmacy deploys Microsoft
and Dell tools to reorganize almost 2,000 desktops and servers while
rethinking its security practices. Find out why, in this case, MOM
knows best.
by Sarah Lysecki 
Canada’s largest drug store chain recently
implemented systems management software that has reduced the average
time it takes to push out a software patch from 11 or 12 days down
to two to three.
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Shoppers
Drug Mart has spent the last six months working with Dell Canada
Inc., Microsoft Canada Co. and Microsoft gold
certified partner LegendCorp to develop a solution to help it
better manage nearly 2,000 desktops and servers across the
enterprise. To date, Shoppers has deployed Microsoft Systems
Management Server (SMS) 2003 and Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM)
2005 and is currently migrating its servers from Microsoft Exchange
2000 to the 2003 version.
The project follows an agreement reached by Dell and Microsoft
last November to integrate Dell OpenManage 4 systems management
software with Microsoft SMS 2003 to unify disparate system software,
operating systems and applications tools to a standard interface
that users can manage from a single console. Dell last month
announced a similar agreement with Altiris that allows users to use
the single patch tool for automated delivery of BIOS, ROM and
firmware updates. Dell’s OpenManage software is also integrated with
other vendors’ applications including Computer Associates
International Inc., BMC Software, IBM Tivoli and Hewlett-Packard
OpenView.
David MacMillan, manager of office network services at Shoppers
said one of the key reasons for rolling out SMS was to improve patch
management and software distribution across its 1,400 desktops, 350
laptops and 65 Windows servers. Prior to SMS, MacMillan, who spoke
at a roundtable hosted by Dell on Tuesday, said it was difficult to
update these machines.
“Our main goal was patch management but the extra bonus was
software asset control and software distribution,” said MacMillan,
adding mobile workers had to come into the office twice a year for
installation of software patches.
Automating updates to PCs were also made difficult by the fact
Shoppers uses group policies within Microsoft Active Directory to
lock down and control user machines. With SMS, Shoppers is now able
to use the application to push out pieces of the patches at a time
when users are connected to the network.
“(SMS) makes it a lot easier for us to manage the process from
the standpoint of having more visibility into the success or failure
of the patch process that we didn’t have a lot of visibility to
before,” said MacMillan. “We’d push it out in the past and not
really have a good idea of what the success rate was. It gives me a
lot better reporting capability to see where I stand.”
Shoppers tested each application at its onsite lab with the help
of LegendCorp.
“You can’t manage what you don’t know,” said LegendCorp president
Andy Papadopoulos. “I can count the number of times Shoppers has
called for support help on one hand.”
Papadopoulos added Shoppers is now able to do any additional
tests for software updates in the lab before rolling them into
production.
On server side, Shoppers deployed MOM to better manage
proprietary and internal tools used for managing pieces of the
infrastructure like performance monitoring from one console, said
MacMillan. Shoppers used basic performance management from Microsoft
as well as individual hardware products from Dell and HP to manage
its server infrastructure. Shoppers is not alone -- according to a
recent IDC study, 77 per cent of the market uses five different
toolsets to what MacMillan described.
“MOM allows us to bring wizards from Dell's separate management
products that we’ve used in the past,” said MacMillan. “We get the
trend analysis that we didn’t have previously, allowing much better
visibility into what’s going on in the server environments.”
Debora Jensen, vice-president of the advanced systems group at
Dell Canada, said Dell is trying to avoid proprietary type of
environments that lock clients in.
“As the world becomes very complex, we’re trying to drive
standards into the data centre that make things very simple,” said
Jensen. “The simpler things are, the easier they are to manage, the
more cost effective they are and at the end of the day they do drive
increasing value.”
By enabling users to cut down the time it takes to update
software and hardware, Dell and Microsoft hope to reduce the
percentage of IT budgets devoted to sustaining and maintaining
current networks. According to a recent Accenture study,
approximately 70 per cent of an organization’s IT budget is used to
do just that or as Microsoft Canada’s senior product manager for
security and management Derick Wong said, “keeping the lights on.”
That leaves only 30 per cent of the budget for new IT projects, Wong
added.
“At Microsoft we’re trying to reduce that 70 per cent down to 50
per cent for our customers,” said Wong. “A lot of that 70 per cent
is because there are so many different tools that are used for
network management such as patch management and update
management”
Aside from central console administration, MOM also enables
Shoppers to create a knowledge base about previous problems and how
they were fixed so if the problem happens again, the analyst can
identify the problem and apply the appropriate remedy. MacMillan
added this feature is especially important given companies’ ability
to hire and retain knowledgeable workers.
“It gives you the hardware view to say, ‘I have a problem with
this hard drive or the memory,’” said MacMillan. “Now we’re able to
bring that directly into MOM.”
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