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Customer Success Stories County of Alameda – BlackBerry® in the Line of Duty
The 8,000 employees of California's Alameda County communicate extensively via e-mail. Many of these employees are constantly on the go and therefore require mobile access to their e-mail to accomplish mission critical tasks. As a result, sheriffs, firefighters, public health, and social services staffers are avid BlackBerry users. These employees are rarely at their desk given the nature of their jobs, but they still need to stay connected with their e-mail to get their jobs done. No matter where they are as they race around the vast county (one of California's largest), these users almost have a sixth sense when something is even remotely wrong with their BlackBerry service. One of the most common BlackBerry support tickets that arrives back at headquarters: “e-mail seems slow today--please fix.” These users certainly don't care whether the problem lies with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), the Exchange server, a DNS server, or the RIM service itself. All they know is that something isn't right, and they're going to complain increasingly loudly until the problem is solved. Paul Hinsberg, the Senior Server Engineer for the County of Alameda, is the primary engineer for the entire Microsoft Exchange and BlackBerry environment for his organization. Hinsberg notes a rapid growth in the number of BlackBerry users during his tenure and doesn’t see any slowdown in the use of mobile devices in the future. “My users rely on their BlackBerry device, so my department needs to make sure that e-mail gets through to them in a timely manner.” Downtime isn't an option, especially when emergency services hang in the balance. Detect the Hidden ProblemsThat's why Hinsberg installed Zenprise: to help him uncover existing or pending problems hidden in his infrastructure. Prior to using Zenprise, Hinsberg thought that his system was set up correctly, but users continued complaining about slow e-mail service. Hinsberg installed Zenprise and was surprised to learn about a DNS misconfiguration that affected his BlackBerry Enterprise Server. The impact of this issue: users experienced slow mail delivery to their BlackBerry device. "I thought I had it all under control," Hinsberg remembers, but Zenprise was finding issues he didn’t even know about. In another instance, Zenprise alerted Hinsberg that one of his domain controllers was out of sync. His existing monitoring system said the system was working fine, but Zenprise’s deeper application-level inspection revealed bad records, as well as a series of missing critical server patches. "Zenprise even has the smarts to warn me if a hotfix I'm planning to install could harm my system. It knows if the fix has known problems with my configuration." Save TimeHinsberg always has to move fast. “When one of my BlackBerry users has a problem, I’m not particularly interested in logging into every BlackBerry, Microsoft Exchange, and Active Directory server to sift through event log files to diagnose some obscure issue,” Hinsberg explains. "And I don't have the time. The last thing I need is a County Supervisor, or a Sheriff or Fire Chief to feel frustrated by any BlackBerry problems. Zenprise analyzes my entire system on a regular basis and proactively finds issues before my users do.” Instead of scanning eight log files on four systems, which can take 20 to 30 minutes, Hinsberg depends on Zenprise to direct him to the problem and suggest specific corrective actions. "I don't have to worry about the kind of countywide outage that would prevent my Blackberry users from sending/receiving e-mail or updating their calendars." Proactive Problem DetectionOf course, problems will always pop up. When an employee leaves, incorrectly decommissioning their mailboxes can wreak all sorts of havoc. For example, deleting the users Exchange mailbox without deleting their account on BlackBerry can cause the BlackBerry server to hang. The BlackBerry server tries to access a mailbox that no longer exists on Exchange, thereby causing the problem. “Zenprise discovers these problems early in the game and alerts me of the problem so we can quickly correct the issue before service is ever compromised,” says Hinsberg. Does Zenprise make Hinsberg psychic? Not exactly, but he likes to tell this story: “A while back, the RIM SRP network came down, and BlackBerry devices stopped receiving e-mail. Using Zenprise, we could tell a couple of days before the actual outage that something was wrong with the RIM service. When the network eventually went down, we knew immediately that the problem was not with our core infrastructure.” With the help of Zenprise, Hinsberg detected the outage immediately and alerted his support group. The troubleshooting started well before the outage actually happened, thereby averting a potential nightmare. “Zenprise is always working to diagnose and suggest corrections to problems. This allows me to avoid the painful position of having to react to a crisis,” says Hinsberg. Do More with the Same Staff And who has the time for crises, anyway? Hinsberg reports that he has between 10 and 15 ongoing projects underway at any time, but he likes to focus on no more than three at a time. He needs ways to offload some of his work to his broader support team. In other words, he needs more productivity from every one of his team mates. Like most other organizations, Alameda County takes a tiered approach to support. Tier 1 takes support requests from end users, Tier 2 solves harder problems, and Hinsberg himself gets involved when necessary at the tier 3 level. Currently, the majority of BlackBerry/Exchange server problems are escalated directly from the Tier 1 team to Hinsberg. Zenprise’s proactive problem detection and detailed resolution instructions now means that the other support teams can now directly resolve more problems on their own. “I’m estimating that 90% of the everyday operational problems can now be handled by the Tier 1 and Tier 2 teams.” With fewer help desk calls coming in, Hinsberg's team can use their valuable talents to tackle all those other pressing projects. Hinsberg sees Zenprise as the answer to the engineer’s quest for a proactive problem-solving solution. It finds the problems first and allows less experienced staff to handle everyday issues, a big potential time and money saver. When a larger problem arises, Hinsberg sees it first and has the corrective information at hand to solve it quickly. And out in the field, the vital services the County provides don't miss a beat. Ultimately, that's what matters most. Zenprise, Inc.
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