[A Cisco Transaction Connection and StarSQL Enterprise Edition Case Study] Kaiser Permanente Finds Healthy Solution to Access DB2 Innovative Connectivity Solution Protects Data Center Investment, Saves Money and Increases End User Productivity for Major HMO Kaiser Permanente’s user community, now spread throughout the United States, represents groups as varied as Kaiser Permanente hospitals, medical buildings, campus environments and alliances, where literally many thousands of people need access to Kaiser Permanente’s DB2 data. Identifying the Problem "Users could be anyone from a receptionist who asks for your membership card, to a doctor or pharmacist who may need to gain access to information on a patient’s medical history. Or a medical researcher performing a scientific investigation would need DB2 data," explained Cynthia Gawley-Uy, Kaiser Permanente’s Network Design Engineering Consultant. "Our goal was to improve connectivity from the desktop to get our DB2 data efficiently and securely to our diverse group of users, no matter where they are located." Continued Gawley-Uy. "We needed to streamline access to users who needed to make critical decisions in this highly competitive health care environment." Kaiser Permanente’s Information Technology department seized the opportunity to test and deploy an innovative, standards-based database access solution that provides direct access to the company’s massive DB2 databases from their Windows-based desktop systems. Software Reduces Expenses and Increases Productivity "We were implementing a high-speed ATM wide-area backbone in Northern California and introduced TCP/IP as the vehicle for delivering our data," Manny Aguilera, former Kaiser Permanente Network Engineering Consultant recalls. "As a large Cisco Systems customer, we contemplated on how could we streamline our database access, using our existing Cisco infrastructure?" The answer came in the form of a powerful new enterprise-level connectivity solution from Cisco-the Cisco Transaction Connection-jointly developed by Cisco and StarQuest Software. The two companies joined forces to integrate StarQuest’s StarPipes—TCP/IP-to-SNA software to the Cisco router. StarQuest utilizes IBM’s Distributed Relational Database Architecture (DRDA) and Microsoft’s Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) to provide a streamlined, secure method to access mainframe data with StarQuest’s StarSQL driver on the desktop. The Cisco Transaction Connection has been incorporated into Cisco’s Internet Operating System (IOS), bringing to its router a whole new set of intelligent product functionality. Aguilera continued. "Traditionally, database access meant acquiring a server with several different layers of software accessing the mainframe through the LAN where the router is passive and simply allows the data to pass through one way or the other. In this new environment, the router is now the database gateway which allows us to extract the data when we need it." Kaiser Permanente studies show that its new implementation offers database access that is 30 to 40 percent faster than alternative solutions. The StarQuest and Cisco Transaction Connection solution is also scalable, showing almost no performance degradation when comparing transaction processing speeds for 500 concurrent sessions to those attained for a single session. "Together with StarQuest, Cisco has turned its router into a fully integrated database access platform that allows desktop users running TCP/IP and ODBC from anywhere in the enterprise network," said Gawley-Uy. "In addition, because StarSQL uses DRDA to access the IBM hosts, no additional software is required-another major benefit in terms of initial cost savings and ongoing support and maintenance issues." Gawley-Uy added that the Cisco Transaction Connection also allows Kaiser Permanente to build in a high degree of fault tolerance. "We use Cisco’s Hot Standby Routing Protocol which provides full fault tolerant capabilities for pairs of routers that are used for redundancy. What we have now is a single point of support, with an operating system that our network people are familiar with," said Gawley-Uy. "We have eliminated the scalability problem factors associated with Windows NT, or even UNIX, and it has been turned into a single point of support that requires a minimal amount of additional training and fully leverages our long-standing partnership with Cisco." Gawley-Uy continued. "Our new enhanced routers can easily be supported via our current infrastructure with very little additional training. This represents a huge cost savings for Kaiser - any time you conduct a process, 80 percent of the ongoing costs is support." Leveraging Client/Server and Distributed Processing "We have leveraged client/server and distributed processing to make crucial DB2 data available to our decision makers in a timely manner," Gawley-Uy concluded. "In our previous environment, our developers-staff programmers, application programmers, and system programmers-had to knock on a series of doors to get their jobs done, and that process was often taking weeks. With this solution, our users are now able to perform these tasks dynamically, allowing them to achieve tangible results in a matter of minutes instead of days or weeks. Kaiser Permanente will realize a tremendous amount of overall business savings from this implementation.