Issue link: https://securitytechnologyexecutive.epubxp.com/i/229956
INNOVATION AWARD WINNER: SILVER We were successful and obtained the necessary approval to execute a 3-year FOCUS Agreement at $650,000/year including systems remediation, guaranteed response and basic system administration. In a previous attempt to upgrade the system, Memorial Hermann encountered a tremendous amount of issues resulting from an offline system and unlocked doors, leaving Memorial Hermann vulnerable. Deployment James Wright and Daniel Hickman were the leading Tech Systems engineers assigned to our conversion project. It didn't take long for the mistakes of the past to emerge. First, we identified what technology was there and determined what was working and what wasn't. Then we dug into the individual systems and found a lack of standardization for data input and management. Together we developed a congruent method for the data input and maintenance. Upgrading a legacy security system comes with many unknowns. The performance and wiring for each of the access control and video surveillance components needed to be tested and assessed to allow Tech Systems to perform the necessary updates and replacements. We also discovered that four of the 13 locations were not on the Memorial Hermann corporate WAN. This presented a major challenge to get the IT department on board with expanding the corporate network to accommodate our request to converge the security system. The IT staff was initially reluctant, but cooperated as every department became aware of the need for this transition. Greg Trautman and Carol Hawthorn of Memorial Hermann IT staff were integral to this process and continue to work closely with Tech Systems for the ongoing conversion process and necessary maintenance. The architectural challenge we faced was adherence to Memorial Hermann's policy around virtualization. We took an innovative approach using a Microsoft SQL Server in a Geo-Cluster configuration. This provides a complete failover solution and in-house redundancy. The benefit is that system failures can be recovered very quickly, sometimes seamlessly. The Memorial Hermann IT staff could better control and manage the resources they allocate to the security system by monitoring the workload on the database. In a previous attempt to upgrade the system, Memorial Hermann encountered a tremendous amount of issues resulting from an offline system and unlocked doors. It was extremely important for the conversion to work properly the first time without leaving Memorial Hermann vulnerable. The team soon developed a migration path that converted each site one component at a time. To accomplish this, Tech Systems used a fail-safe mockup of the new system and operated it for a full week prior to deactivating the old system. Once the testing period was complete the original C•Cure 800 machines ran alongside the new C•Cure 9000 platform, as scripts extracted the data and then imported the data into the new platform. The team then tested each system, one component at a time. The collaboration between our team, Tech Systems and Software House was critical. The conversion is successful and the deployment has been on track as a result of our close partnership and ongoing communication efforts. The frequency of our conference call schedule symbolizes the progress we've made in the project. In the beginning we would hold daily conference calls to keep everything on target. As we progressed we adjusted to weekly conference calls. Now we are far enough along that we are preparing an adjustment to monthly calls. As the focus changed from converting the old system to operating the new system, Tech Systems, Software House and Memorial Hermann staff collaborated to establish a set of go-forward standard operating procedures for managing credentials and continuous updates. Adjustments to the System Badging: Memorial Hermann recently rebranded the organization which created one large unexpected project -- rebadging for approximately 30,000 badge-holders. This process could have easily become a logistical nightmare with so 26 SECURITY TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE • November/December 2013 www.SecurityInfoWatch.com