Milwaukee County Centralizes Dozens of File Transfer Systems on Progress MOVEit
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MOVEitChallenge
Milwaukee County had dozens of file transfer solutions used across their departments, which required manual work, custom coding and a huge time commitment.
Solution
A single solution that would: boost technological efficiency and centralize file transfer; quickly onboard and integrate a wide variety of disparate data systems; not only support mission-critical data transfer but also make that data trackable and secure to comply with regulations.
Result
Quick and seamless adoption of Progress® MOVEit® across different teams and departments; a feature-rich transfer tool; workload of developers substantially reduced - automated file transfer has replaced manually transferring files and custom coding; establishing MOVEit as the County’s file transfer standard.
Full Story
Challenge
Established in 1835, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, is home to nearly a million residents and is the hub of the 37th largest regional economy in the United States. It proudly services diverse residents of all backgrounds and ages through a wide range of governmental departments, from Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Parks and Recreation, Transportation, Public Safety, the Courts and much, much more.
As with any large matrixed organization, technology infuses everything it does as it strives to efficiently serve its many constituencies. So it wasn’t surprising when each team and department had developed its own platforms and solutions for gathering and transferring data. Ryan Schmidt, IT Manager, Applications, Milwaukee County remembers evaluating the systems when he first joined the County, “From what I could see there were many servers all over the place that just had data feeds kicking off different processes from SQL jobs, to desktop jobs to COZYROC—with a variety of schedulers.”
The Information Management Services Division decided to turn this around and streamline data transfer to reduce inefficiencies. “With the large amount of data to store and transfer, it seemed to be common sense to bring that need under one solution instead of dozens,” Schmidt said.
When we compared MOVEit to other vendors, they didn’t even come close.
Ryan Schmidt
IT Manager, Applications, Milwaukee County
Solution
The County previously had FTP ability and was looking for an enterprise solution to manage and centralize its file transfer. The requirement was to implement a single solution that would not only support mission-critical data transfer but also make that data trackable and keep it secure to comply with regulations like HIPAA. The ability to quickly onboard and integrate a wide variety of disparate data systems and processes was paramount. After a thorough evaluation of multiple vendors, Schmidt’s team chose Progress MOVEit. “I remember when we evaluated all of them. It wasn’t even a close decision.”
In dissecting its complex needs, primary use cases fell into three areas: ERP, Finance and Human Resources. “We moved fairly quickly and got it adopted for those use cases. And as we evaluated it, we determined it was going to meet all the other use cases that do come up. We were pleasantly surprised with the functionality,” said Schmidt.
In terms of integrations, the team used UNC Shares, SharePoint, AWS S3, SSH, FTP and SMTP alongside MOVEit.
Result
The Milwaukee County team experienced the MOVEit difference right away, and more teams and departments were getting on board every day. Each team was happy they no longer had to manually transfer files, or spend time writing code in their applications to handle the file transfers between environments and systems.
MOVEit’s extraordinary ease of use proved to be particularly valuable. As Schmidt put it, “MOVEit is a solution we can actually use. Some solutions can absolutely do everything under the sun, but they are so complex to configure you don’t really ever discover their potential. With MOVEit, right after install, we just started using it.”
Ilija Lukic, Application Analyst III, Milwaukee County, has deep experience with nearly every aspect of IT and found MOVEit to be one of his favorite applications, “I love its many capabilities. The developer in me can’t wait to use the API functionality. All around, MOVEit is a very solid, feature-rich file transfer tool.”
The team’s task now shifts to strategically socializing MOVEit as the County’s file transfer standard, and getting all departments on board, “Any time we catch wind of somebody moving a file, we say, ‘Oh, don’t do it that way anymore. Bring it in here’,” said Schmidt.
Ahead, the team looks forward to exploring the full capabilities of MOVEit Automation and MOVEit Transfer, adding more modules as the need arises. The PGP encryption module is one on their radar. “We’re expecting to easily triple the usage of this in the next year. Every single week, we’re talking about adding more stuff to MOVEit. Anything we can do to automate something that one of our stakeholders needs, the better. We want to be able to push the limits of the system.”
MOVEit is a solution we can actually use. Some solutions can absolutely do everything under the sun, but they are so complex to configure you don’t really ever discover their potential. With MOVEit, right after install, we just started using it.
Ryan Schmidt
IT Manager, Applications, Milwaukee County