A corporation needs to establish a single, scalable application and database infrastructure capable of centralizing mission-critical applications for more than 40 campuses, with an expected growth rate of 35 percent annually.
Done.
Career Education Corporation (CEC) deployed a 32-processor Unisys ES7000 server employing Intel® Xeon® 1.4 GHz processors and running in a Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Datacenter Server and SQL Server 2000 environment. The new platform provides a solid, robust infrastructure for CEC, a company that expects a 35-percent growth rate annually. Since implementation, CEC has acquired 40 more campuses in its network, increased employee productivity, and tripled the number of concurrent users.
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Unisys & Career Education Corporation (.wmv, 2:47) |
Improved Competitive Position through Strategic Use of IT
By deploying a single integrated and more powerful infrastructure for all its campuses, CEC is positioned to readily handle growth and attract new campuses to its education network.
Metrics
- Scalability: Provided CEC with the scalability needed to support 40 newly acquired campuses
- Productivity: Increased employee productivity by an 80-to-1 reduction in database updates
- Growth: Enabled CEC to triple the number of concurrent users supported from 1,000 to 3,000
Business Challenge: Creating a Scalable, Integrated Infrastructure
Career Education Corporation (CEC) is the largest provider of post-secondary for-profit education in the world. With more than 83,000 students, 10,000 employees, and 80 campuses in North America, Europe, and the United Arab Emirates, CEC schools are concentrated on IT, business, culinary arts, visual communications, graphical arts, and health education.
A few years ago, CEC was faced with a major IT challenge. All its campuses owned and operated their own systems and technology. With no common infrastructure in place, CEC knew it could only achieve greater manageability and performance by centralizing all these Windows-based operating systems, which ran mission-critical applications such as student information and financial systems.
At the same time, CEC had a total of 40 schools in its network with an expected annual growth rate of more than 35 percent. Running out of horsepower in its database environment, CEC needed a scalable solution to not only support rapid growth, but also to help CEC establish a single interconnected infrastructure for all its campuses. With such a top-notch IT environment in place, CEC would be able to continue attracting new campuses to its education network.
Solution: Standardizing on a Unisys ES7000 Server and Microsoft Platform
In order for CEC to be a worldwide, first-class organization, we had to have a first-class infrastructure. That’s why we chose the Unisys ES7000 server.
Mark Griesbaum
Chief Information Officer
CEC
With help from Unisys consulting experts, CEC was able to execute its strategy within 15 months. CEC moved all its schools onto a single infrastructure and consolidated onto a 32-processor Unisys ES7000 server running in a Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server and SQL Server 2000 environment. “In order for CEC to be a worldwide, first-class organization, we had to have a first-class infrastructure. That’s why we chose the Unisys ES7000 server,” says Mark Griesbaum, Chief Information Officer.
A proof-of-concept service delivered by Unisys and Microsoft was key to the decision-making process, clearly demonstrating to CEC how well the ES7000 server would perform. Unisys took CEC’s mission-critical Campus 2000 application, database, and all the transactions that occurred from its schools through a daylong period and ran them on a 32-way ES7000 server running Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter and SQL Server 2000.
“Once the benchmark was complete, Unisys came back to us with the results and consulted with us on how to best configure the ES7000 and all its components so that CEC would get the best processing power and performance from our applications,” says Griesbaum. “The proof of concept sold us on how well the ES7000 would handle our database and support our continual growth.”
Results: Enhanced Performance in a Future-Proofed Environment
Since implementing the ES7000 server, CEC has been able to support its rapid growth and has doubled the amount of campuses in its network, which now totals 80. The ES7000 server is being used to run CEC’s most mission-critical application, Campus 2000. Used by every campus in the network, Campus 2000 tracks a student’s history—from recruiting and graduation to post-graduate employment. It also holds basic information pertaining to a student’s financial aid, transcripts, and attendance.
“It doesn’t get more critical then not having enough scalability,” says Dave Czeszewski, Vice President, IT Strategic Development. “Implementing the ES7000 server has enabled CEC to operate in a scale-up environment and consolidate all of our schools into a single database. Now when we make an update to Campus 2000, we can update one database instead of 80.”
Prior to implementing the ES7000 server, Campus 2000 was experiencing performance problems. Response times were slow and users were receiving error messages. Now, Campus 2000 produces 8,000 transactions per minute (tpm) on the database. “I wanted people calling me up and saying ‘Wow, what happened? What did you do?’ And that is exactly what happened,” says Griesbaum.
CEC currently runs a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database on the ES7000 server, which produces about 16 million transactions per day. “Prior to deploying the ES7000 server we had approximately 1000 users per day that would access our system,” says Czeszewski. “Today, we have 3000 concurrent users and expect to have a 30- to 35-percent growth rate on top of that on an annual basis. We are confident that with the scalable ES7000 server we’ll easily be able to handle that growth.”
Additionally, CEC implemented Microsoft Exchange Server 2000 to run its Student Portal, which allows students to view their individual information in a self-service manner. Students can make tuition payments, register for classes, and view grades via the Student Portal. On a daily basis, 20,000 to 25,000 students use the student email system provided by the Student Portal.
As part of its continuing growth, CEC was not only looking at computing power, but also throughput and application software. Knowing that processing power was available to support growth via the ES7000 server, CEC wanted to ensure it would have the throughput with its data storage and disks. As a result, CEC has implemented, through the partnership of Unisys and EMC, a new EMC DMX 3000 disk and Storage Area Network (SAN) solution. Now CEC can support 30TB in its new storage environment.
Deploying the ES7000 server changed the way things at CEC were done. Previously, every school would send numbers in reporting on financials and grade reporting and CEC employees would have to manually put them together in spreadsheets, which was very labor-intensive. Now in a matter of pushing a few buttons, school administrators get that information on how their schools are performing right away.
The Relationship: Value through Collaboration
“The Unisys team understands our business, our future goals, and that ultimately is helping us better support our schools and customers,” says Griesbaum. “They are always thinking about how they can help us get to the next level technology-wise and how they can bring different partners in to the help get us there.”
To keep up with the company’s rapid growth, CEC recently purchased two 32-way Unisys ES7000 servers employing Intel® Itanium® 2 processors, which will enable the company to support a 64-bit architecture.
Through the strategic partnerships of Unisys, Microsoft, and EMC, CEC is positioned as a strong competitor in its market. “Since we’ve implemented the Unisys and Microsoft platform, people have taken notice of how big we are and the kind of applications that we’re running on higher education,” says Griesbaum.
Profile: Career Education Corporation
- World’s largest provider of post-secondary for-profit education
- More than 83,000 students, 10,000 employees, and 80 campuses in North America, Europe, and the United Arab Emirates
- Visit CEC at: www.careered.com
Solution at a Glance
- Unisys ES7000 enterprise server
- Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
- Microsoft SQL Server 2000
- EMC DMX 3000 disk storage
- EMC Storage Area Network (SAN)
