Opengear solutions help BCBSSC optimize operations & save costs

Highlights

• BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina (BCBSSC) is the only health insurance carrier owned and operated in South Carolina and has provided health coverage to its residents for over 70 years. With more than 16,000 employees, BCBSSC is now one of the largest employers in South Carolina.
• To support its 16,000 employees and more than 21.5 million members, the 60-member network administration team needed to manage more devices. However, their legacy out-of-band solution was inefficient and burdensome to use.
• During a network refresh in 2020, the BCBSSC network administration team upgraded their out-of-band solution and switched to Opengear’s network resilience platform. After adopting Opengear’s Smart Out of Band solution, network engineer Chris Daniels and his team noticed a significant increase in efficiency and a cost savings of approximately $2,250 to $2,500 USD, equivalent to 40 to 50 hours of labor.

Customer Story

Owned and operated in South Carolina, BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina (BCBSSC) has served the Palmetto State for over 70 years. With 20 businesses and more than 16,000 employees, it is one of the largest employers in South Carolina.

BCBSSC is known for its innovative health plan design and has successfully created and adopted new ways to provide health coverage to customers. The company supports a variety of technical capabilities and it leverages a reliable and resilient network to provide outstanding services to customers.

However, as BCBSSC has continued to expand its network, setting up new data centers and network devices, it became clear that their legacy out-of-band network solution was inadequate. The COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the need for a more capable solution that could be managed efficiently by limited on-site staff. As part of a network refresh project, the network administration team embarked on a search to replace their existing out-of-band solution.

Challenge

BCBSSC constantly strives to provide new types of healthcare coverage that improve patient outcomes while lowering healthcare costs. The company achieves this through its strong technical capabilities and resilient network, which support innovative customer solutions.

Over the years, BCBSSC has expanded and now has a campus in South Carolina consisting of multiple data centers, offices, and an innovation lab. Additionally, they have another data center in Pennsylvania. To support its 16,000 employees and more than 21.5 million members, the 60-member network administration team needed to manage more devices. However, the legacy out-of-band solution was neither efficient nor easy to use.

Furthermore, the pandemic, with its lockdowns and travel restrictions, compelled the BCBSSC network-administration team to accelerate their efforts to replace the legacy out-of-band solution. The data center administration team responsible for keeping the data centers running had just a few members, and the network operations team required additional help to ensure that the business could continue with minimal disruption. Therefore, they needed a reliable out-of-band solution to help them easily configure equipment and troubleshoot issues.

“You can just go to the Lighthouse dashboard and search and find what you’re looking for. That’s a process improvement for sure.”

Solution

During a network refresh in 2020, the BCBSSC network administration team upgraded their out-of-band solution and transitioned to Opengear’s network resilience platform. The team uses Opengear’s software solution Lighthouse to manage deployments, monitor connected resources, and expedite their access to critical network devices. Unlike manual methods, which can cause data-integrity and efficiency issues, Lighthouse provides centralized provisioning, a reliable source of truth, and scalability.

Their legacy console servers had a distracting interface and a Java-based design that was not particularly user friendly. They required dongles to connect, which meant more clutter. Sometimes, the dongles would go missing, and the team needed to find a rollover cable to connect, creating more work for them.

Opengear’s solution offered streamlined connectivity, a clean interface, and a centralized portal. When the team assessed new out-of-band solutions, Opengear’s user-friendly interface stood out. Additionally, Opengear appliances come with a broad selection of network and port-connectivity options. With standardized X2 (Cisco straight) pinout for RJ45 and RS-232 console ports, they offer direct connectivity to connect network devices to Opengear appliances without requiring special cables or adapters.

The team chose IM7200 Infrastructure Managers with software selectable ports “Cisco Straight/Rolled,” aka “X2/X1” pinouts. Designed for data centers and large IT deployments, IM7200 enables secure connectivity to network devices from anywhere, including control rooms and network-operations centers. As BCBSSC Network Engineer Chris Daniels notes, it provides efficiency, as the team can configure it to use a Yost/rollover cable or a straight-through cable. It offers flexibility and helps with productivity when managing their out-of-band network. Daniels further explains, “If you want a new connection somewhere, the data center administration team just needs to find the proper cable; any cable (straight or rollover) will do now.”

Results

After adopting Opengear’s Smart Out of Band solution, Chris and his network administration team have realized significant efficiency improvements and cost savings across their network operations. The team has significantly reduced the time needed to configure a device and has also seen a decline in costs.

According to Daniels, Opengear has helped them improve their operations in multiple ways. First, the team uses Opengear’s software solution, Lighthouse. According to Daniels, Lighthouse provides one screen to monitor things and helps them gain efficiency. “The nicest thing about it is that it connects to all the other Opengear units, so it gives you one screen to go to in order to find what you’re looking for.” Before using Lighthouse, with so many different devices in the data center, it was hard for the team to pinpoint a particular device. Chris used to maintain a spreadsheet, then moved to a cloud sheet, yet these solutions were messy. Today he logs into Lighthouse to easily locate a particular device.

Second, Opengear helps his team troubleshoot their connected network devices when things do not go as planned. Third, it has expedited the deployment of new equipment in their lab. As Daniels explains, “We use Opengear in our lab. When we receive new equipment, our data center admin team puts together the equipment and racks it in the lab. Then we use Opengear to console into that new equipment and configure it.” This also comes in handy when they have new team members onsite.

Opengear helps the BCBSSC network administration team with day 0/1 jobs: “We use Opengear in our lab. When we receive new equipment, our data center admin team puts together the equipment and racks it in the lab. Then, we use Opengear to console into that new equipment and configure it.”

Daniels adds, “If you need help when configuring equipment, Opengear provides support. For example, a new staff member gets equipment to configure, and they’re not sure exactly what to do. Today, we can get on a video call, and I can help them navigate.”

Daniels and his team are presently involved in upgrading 25 to 30 switches that have come to the end of their life cycle. Instead of traveling to a remote location to configure these devices, Chris leverages Opengear to gain remote access, saving him around 40 to 50 hours of labor and a cost of approximately $2,250 to $2,500 USD.

Additionally, the network admin team uses Opengear to stage code. Before COVID-19, when most of them worked in an office, this was an on-site job. “Most of the time, if you had an equipment to configure, you just had to go on site and go to the equipment and console into it to configure it,” says Daniels. “Then, you stage it, you prep it once you’re done, it would get deployed in its final location, and you just hoped it worked. Today, we could get these tasks done remotely through Opengear.”

As a next step, Chris and his team plan to create a private cellular network to ensure cellular connectivity for their Smart Out of Band network. Thanks to Lighthouse, should their production network’s means of communicating gets interrupted, the BCBSSC network administration team will always be able to access their critical network devices, just as if their production network is up.