eHealth
Breaking through the fog of deception with ControlUp

ControlUp has become the go-to information provider for eHealth NSW, Australia’s largest public health system.

A branch of the New South Wales (NSW) Ministry of Health in Australia, eHealth is responsible for setting eHealth strategy, policy and standards, and works with Local Health Districts (LHDs) and Health Agencies to implement statewide core systems and ensure compliance with statewide standards.

It’s a large organization and, like many large organizations, it’s made up of different business arms that are siloed, and that can negatively impact workflows, and ultimately adversely affect the customer and user experience.

Because of this siloed work environment, eHealth’s IT team was struggling to get a clear picture of what was going on in their end-user computing environment, on the whole, because they had no choice but to rely on the information they were given by the different branches of the organization. They call this the “fog of deception.”

“ControlUp allows us to bypass egos and external influences and just see the raw information. There’s no ego in ControlUp; it’s just information, unvarnished by humans,” says Noel Mahnkopf of eHealth.

If You Change Nothing, Nothing Changes

eHealth had multiple systems in place for things like alerts and monitoring, but none of them was providing meaningful information. “They all have dashboards and pretty, flashing lights, but at the end of the day, that’s meaningless,” Mahnkopf says. “These things provide no context as to how the end-user is actually working.”

eHealth knew they needed a change; if they didn’t find it, they would continue to flounder in the fog of deception. They came to ControlUp, saw it in action, and immediately knew it was the right fit. “ControlUp gives us live, tactical information. It’s valuable, it’s usable, and it’s relevant,” they told us.

ControlUp Gives Us Confidence

“We had no confidence in the tools we were using,” says Mahnkopf. With these tools, he says, they had no ability to check the veracity of the information that was produced, and none of it was in real time, which for an organization of eHealth’s size, rendered it practically useless.

When we asked them when they realized that ControlUp could remove their pain, they responded, simply: “We used it.”

With ControlUp implemented across the eHealth organization, they are now able to cut through the bureaucracy and get the information they need, and all from one console. Among the things they found indispensable with ControlUp, right out of the box were:

• Have remote desktop access
• Ease of maneuverability around their organization
• Proactive remediation on the fly
• The ability to easily roll out and implement updates
• The ability to set triggers when user-determined certain limits are met
• Consolidation of events
• Increased flexibility

Even with all of this, the eHealth team has asked their team at ControlUp— Ari Nazarian, Landon Winburn, and Breno Basilio—for some specific functionality that they thought would make their lives easier. “You guys have the fastest lifecycle I’ve ever seen! When we make a suggestion for an improvement, you guys actually make it happen, and usually in just a couple of weeks. You don’t get that with other vendors,” says Noel.

ControlUp Keeps Our Teams Happy, So We’re Happy

In IT, efficiency is critically important. With ControlUp, the eHealth IT team can now manage their entire infrastructure from a single pane of glass. Where their old previous solution might take months to find issues, ControlUp can get to their root causes in just a few minutes. For eHealth, ControlUp is a zero-impact solution that gives them near-instant information; it isn’t CPU-intensive, and there’s nothing to install. When compared to other solutions—especially for what you get—they say, ControlUp is a great value. eHealth calls ControlUp and what it has meant, in terms of organizational change, “priceless.”

“ControlUp has become our go-to information provider, and we’ve got buyin across the organization. Now, when people want to know something,” Mahnkopf says, “They ask, ‘Well, what does ControlUp say?’” eHealth says the platform sells itself.

In large organizations, like eHealth, updating servers and applications can be cumbersome. With the system they used prior to ControlUp, if there was a problem, eHealth would have to shut down and reboot all the servers across their infrastructure, causing all of their users to lose productivity. With ControlUp, all that has changed. Now, if there’s an issue, an update goes awry, or a file is somehow missed, the eHealth can find and fix the problem or that update can get made simply, without interruption; their end-users can stay productive and they never miss a beat.

Looking Toward the Future

Mahnkopf says eHealth has lots of plans for ControlUp. Since they implemented the platform, they’re able to pinpoint and remediate issues on the fly, in real time. They have not only cut through the fog of deception, but they have saved time and countless work-hours by using ControlUp’s Scripts and Automated Actions.

eHealth are in touch, regularly, with their Customer Success team here at ControlUp, whether it’s to inquire about upcoming updates or to make suggestions about potential features. For them, ControlUp has proven competent, trustworthy—both in the promise of its technology and in the care team—and efficient, giving eHealth end-to-end visibility into their infrastructure and greater control over their systems.