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Improved IT Communications Help Preserve Data and Save Tens of Thousands of Dollars

Weizmann Institute of Science

  • Industry: Education
  • Use case: IT Outages, Cybersecurity, Maintenance Notifications
  • Location: Israel
  • Employees: 2,600
 

Prevented costly data and money loss

 

Ensured 100% visibility with acknowledgment

 

Improved reliability of scientific processes

Company overview

The Weizmann Institute of Science is one of the world's largest multidisciplinary basic research institutions in the fields of natural and exact sciences, offering only postgraduate degrees to its students. Located in Israel, the institute was founded in 1934 and today has around 6,000 scientists, students, and personnel working there. 

The Weizmann Institute is associated with six Nobel Laureates and three Turing Award winners. It has five faculties divided into 17 scientific departments.

Summary

Email reminders weren’t reliable enough for a research institute where long-running scientific processes depended on uninterrupted IT systems. So they implemented DeskAlerts’ instant pop-up alerts with acknowledgment tracking to notify staff about planned maintenance and downtime. With DeskAlerts, they prevented costly data loss, ensured 100% visibility of critical alerts, and protected the integrity of vital research processes.

img The Weizmann Institute of Science

Challenge

IT Communication is Crucial for Avoiding Data and Money Loss

Staff who are unaware of planned maintenance can face a sudden interruption of the important processes, which might result in significant data and money loss. 

Properly functioning IT systems are crucial for faculty operations. Many of the processes that are run cannot be interrupted, otherwise the work will be lost. They need to be completed fully before any kind of IT maintenance can be performed. This is a challenge for the IT department as it has a lot of systems to maintain.

This challenge led the IT team to look for a solution that could not only send announcements about maintenance, outages, server downtime, and so on, but also required recipients to verify and acknowledge that they had received and read the message.

quote2

It’s very important when we send a message about maintenance or downtime, and that type of thing, that people will read it, will acknowledge it, and that there will be no excuse like ‘I didn’t see the email.

Gregory Iablonovsky
System Administrator

For example, the process for the full sequencing of the human genome can take two or three days to run. The machine doing the actual sequencing is performing reads and writes nonstop on the network share drive. 

If interruptions to the network or storage services occur, the sequencing will fail. The impact is huge as the kit to perform genome sequencing costs tens of thousands of dollars. If the process fails, it needs to be thrown away, and the results will be compromised.

The institute also has other processes that can take a week or two to run. It is therefore crucial that everyone is aware of any problems so they won't start running a process at the wrong time.

Solution

Ensure all Users are Aware of Technical Issues

The Weizmann Institute of Science implemented DeskAlerts to ensure all users are aware of technical issues and won't begin important processes when the system is down.

The organization chose DeskAlerts as a reliable channel to send critical IT announcements with a guaranteed open rate of 100% and a user acknowledgment function. The IT team usually broadcasts bulk notifications to targeted users based on the Active Directory group membership once a month or when something occurs.

quote2

DeskAlerts software is pretty simple to use and can be learned quickly. And it's natively easy.

Gregory Iablonovsky
System Administrator

The Weizmann Institute of Science uses pop-ups with acknowledgment to send announcements about planned maintenance and system failures to ensure all affected users are aware of the situation. They also plan to use it for other types of announcements, like employee birthday congratulations, and use it as one more channel for communication besides email.

Pop-up alerts are a great way to send messages in a manner that will be seen by all recipients when they are at their workstations. Once a pop-up appears on the screen, it immediately grabs the employee's attention. 

Mobile app is another effective DeskAlerts tool to deliver urgent and critical alerts. Weizmann Institute of Science plans to start using this tool in the near future.

quote2

We're doing proactive maintenance, creating a maintenance window, when everyone knows that some system or systems are down.

Gregory Iablonovsky
System Administrator

Result

Prevention of Data and Money Loss

One of the most serious outcomes of a sudden interruption of the processes (for example, of sequencing the human genome) is that results cannot be verified or trusted. Pop-up notifications sent via DeskAlerts help prevent this situation by informing all affected users in advance and ensuring the sender can be reassured that the notification was received and read by the recipient.

The results of all processes are secure, and staff can be sure nothing will interrupt their work (which would cause the loss of data and money). The use of mobile apps will make this procedure even more effective because even people who are away from their workstations will receive an important alert.

Implementation

The proof of concept stage has been successfully completed. The first stage of the DeskAlerts implementation was a 'proof of concept' installation when only pop-up alerts were used. As DeskAlerts has proven its effectiveness, the Institute is ready to move on with the mobile app and other tools.

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