Harvard Medical School: Boston Children’s Hospital

Harvard Medical School: Boston Children’s Hospital

by | Jul 6, 2020

Background:

Harvard Medical School (HMS) – Boston Children’s Hospital is a 395-bed comprehensive center for pediatric health care. As one of the largest pediatric medical centers in the United States, Children’s offers a complete range of health care services for children from birth through 21 years of age. Children’s records approximately 24,943 inpatient admissions each year, and our 228 specialized clinical programs schedule more than 557,620 visits and have performed 26,534 surgical procedures.

The Challenge:

Boston Children’s uses Atlassian Jira for tracking and managing of Service Desk items and software development. The system needed to be upgraded to the latest Enterprise Jira release, along with updated add-ons and configurations.

The Solution:

Boston Children’s uses Atlassian Jira for tracking and managing of Service Desk items and software development. The system needed to be upgraded to the latest Enterprise Jira release, along with updated add-ons and configurations.

Outcome:

Ascend continues to successfully support HMS – Boston Children’s Hospital by developing customizations to their current Atlassian Tool environment.

Landmark Health

Landmark Health

by | Jul 6, 2020

Background:

Landmark is a healthcare organization formed in 2013 to solve a problem that exists in the United States for people at greatest risk. Many people with multiple chronic health conditions rely on hospital emergency rooms as their primary source of health care. Landmark’s providers – doctors, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants – provide telemedicine capabilities for patients with chronic diseases.

The Challenge:

Landmark Health currently utilizes multiple systems loosely connected in order to implement and management development projects along with ITSM tools for tracking and managing their IT ticketing. The applications have few integration points, and require considerable manual processes. Landmark was looking to refine not only its manual processes, but also to implement the Atlassian Tool Suite.

The Solution:

Ascend worked with Landmark Health to install and configure Data Center versions of the Atlassian applications. Coordinating and facilitating multiple discovery calls, Ascend worked to implement and provide feedback on current processes, and configuring workflows and field configurations into the Data Center implementation. Ascend also worked to provide training support for new users as they were on boarded onto the environment.

Outcome:

Ascend continues to successfully work with Landmark Health providing support for the Data Center installation, configuration and development, and training efforts

American Software

American Software

by | Jun 18, 2020

Background:

American Software is a publicly traded technology company headquarterd in Atlanta, GA. The organization is comprised of multiple tools and services, including Logility, NGC, and Halo all focusing on supply chain management and logistics software.

The Challenge:

Ascend was contracted to work with American Software in helping to consolidate their current Jira Software instances, and migrate from four separate IT Service Management (ITSM) tools into a single instance of Jira Service Desk. The Jira Service Desk and Jira Software environments were needed to support thousands of customers and clients, along with multiple internal project teams. The team also needed to take into account Configuration Management Database (CMDB) and asset management capabilities.

The Solution:

Ascend reviewed the current environments and analyzed both American Software’s ITSM practices and processes, along with American Software’s agile processes. Following discovery, architected a high availability project management and ITSM solution using the Data Center environment, migrating and consolidating multiple Jira environments and multiple ITSM tools from various vendors and home grown solutions into the Jira Data Center and Confluence KB.

Outcome:

Ascend successfully migrated American Software from a multi-tooled environment into a single tool (Jira) with minimal use of add-one / apps to implement configurations. A third party tool was successfully integrated into Jira Software and Service Desk to provide asset management capabilities and functionality.

Micron Technology, Inc

Micron Technology, Inc

by | Oct 18, 2018

Background:

Micron Technologies is a large publicly traded producer of solid state-drives, storage devices, and RAM. They have multiple dispersed teams using Jira Software and Confluence server for collaboration and project management.

The Challenge:

Micron’s use of Jira and Confluence continued to grow past the originally anticipated capacity of several hundred users. There was full time DevOps engineers dedicated to utilizing and maintaining the Atlassian Tool Suite, along with integrating the Atlassian tools with third-party apps such as Jenkins for build and deployment. Micron needed a scalable solution that would be able to handle the load put onto it through multiple concurrent users.

The Solution:

Working with cPrime, Ascend Integrated compiled a list of recommendations, included recommended add-ons/apps, and the importance of migrating to a Jira and Confluence Data Center environment to accommodate additional performance and functionality capabilities. Third-party apps and REST API integrations were also explored, along with the modification/updates of Velocity Templates for outgoing emails. Ascend provided maintenance and support services for Jira and Confluence.

Outcome:

Micron Technology Integrated Jenkins into their Jira instance, and was able to implement the performance updates/configurations successfully. Their Jira instance continues to be used across multiple branches and departments in the organization.

NewRez

NewRez

by | Oct 18, 2018

Background:

NewRez is a regional financial management and mortgage lender operating nationwide. They have multiple lending offices, commercial real estate, and loan management/operational services.

The Challenge:

NewRez is continuing to grow and is looking to expand/manage their IT Help Desk, management, and Agile project management needs. Utilizing multiple third party and homegrown applications, NewRez is looking for both an ITIL v3 and agile method for managing the multitude of services they are providing to their internal clients. NewRez also needed an effective method to report on and analyze IT findings, issues, and locations/configuration items impacted due to an IT outage.

The Solution:

Ascend Integrated worked with NewRez in developing a solution/path forward for the growing organization. Ascend Integrated highlighted a path forward for Agile Project Management and ITIL v3 compliance, utilizing a multi-phased approach. Using the JIRA Software and Service Desk data center instances implemented in NewRez, Ascend installed and configured Workflow Extensions, Dynamic Forms, ScriptRunner, and Arsenale Dataplane to track and manage tickets/requests entered into the JSD portal.

Ascend Integrated also refined the service desk request collection process, including updating workflows, building out automation, and providing custom ITIL v3 guidance for NewRez’s processes. Audibility and traceability were key goals for the solution, providing auditors the ability to review step by step all processes and procedures taken to resolve a request entered through their ticket management system.

Outcome:

Ascend Integrated continues to provide support to NewRez on all aspects of the Atlassian tool suite. NewRez is utilizing their JSD Data Center configured instance for tracking and managing tickets/requests and agile project management processes. ITIL v3 processes implemented by Ascend Integrated continue to help guide the management of the JSD portal, and the streamlined workflows/Arsenale Dataplane reporting capabilities continue to aide the IT Service desk team.