Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida reduces IT costs with BMC software

With the help of BMC Software (NASDAQ:BMC), Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida (BCBSF) is reducing costs while preparing for the new demands healthcare reform will bring to IT.

“The deadlines are more aggressive than they have ever been. If we don't meet deadlines, there's the risk that we might incur penalties. We needed increased productivity and flexible tools so we can deliver the changes on time.”

As a non-profit provider of healthcare plans and services to millions of customers, BCBSF relies on IT to improve healthcare delivery, support its medical and administrative personnel and protect personal health information.

For nearly 10 years, the BMC Control-M workload automation solution has been at the heart of BCBSF IT, scheduling jobs across a complex IT environment of mainframe, UNIX®, Linux® and Intel platforms running a broad range of applications. Control-M is a key enabler of the applications that support healthcare delivery as well as finance, payroll and benefits.

Recent Control-M enhancements, including the BMC Control-M/Enterprise Manager, have brought new improvements to its workload automation, reducing resource needs by 55 percent and freeing personnel for more strategic IT needs such as meeting new healthcare reform mandates.

"New mandates are requiring us to deliver new systems and change existing ones much more quickly," said IT production support manager Rick Zarlenga. "The deadlines are more aggressive than they have ever been. If we don't meet deadlines, there's the risk that we might incur penalties. We needed increased productivity and flexible tools so we can deliver the changes on time."

With the BMC Control-M solution, BCBSF avoids scheduled processing delays by identifying and resolving problems across multiple applications and platforms. This includes a single point of control for managing scheduled processes across the enterprise with a graphical tool that gives immediate access to a broad range of data.

Control-M's interactive management-by-exception abilities extend beyond job-status monitoring. They provide immediate multi-destination error notification and enhanced problem resolution to increase enterprise efficiency. Customers also have an option to monitor and manipulate the production environment in real time.

"Being able to view everything through Enterprise Manager really made a difference," Zarlenga said. "We can pull the needed data from Control-M to do root-cause analysis and trending. We can graph data and slice and dice it so we can understand what is happening and take action to reduce exceptions and eliminate failures."

Additional Control-M components are helping to ensure security, increase productivity and contain costs. For example, the Control-M/CM for Advanced File Transfer component enables secure file transfers across mainframe and distributed systems, including up to 4,000 files daily to external partners. Many of these files include personal health information, making airtight security essential.