Mesa Water District Case Studies

Executive Summary

Times of uncertainty favor the well prepared. In the face of COVID-19 and stay-at-home orders across the country, Mesa Water District (Mesa Water), which provides essential water services to more than 110,000 California residents, looked to leverage their best practice IT architecture and operational management model to quickly implement strategies to remotely manage and operate their award-winning water agency.

About the Client

Based in Costa Mesa, California, Mesa Water has been a key player in water management since its establishment in 1960. Serving a substantial community of 110,000 residents across an 18-square-mile area, encompassing Costa Mesa, a segment of Newport Beach, and John Wayne Airport, Mesa Water is a crucial component of the local water infrastructure.

Committed to excellence, the organization prioritizes the highest standards in customer service, water awareness and conservation, reliable water delivery, and financial leadership and transparency.

The Challenge

Mesa Water's operational staff perform all their day-to-day operational responsibilities from their main headquarters in Costa Mesa, CA. Remote IT services were limited to their field service personnel, remote 24/7 water service monitoring, and the capability to work remotely during off-hours or when traveling.

The COVID-19 pandemic required that the organization quickly transition to an almost 100% remote workforce model without disrupting the provisioning of clean, safe, and reliable water to their customers.

The Approach

Mesa Water and T2Tech effectively collaborated to leverage the following critical success factors for transitioning to a remote workforce operating model:

• Implementing the necessary policies and processes to enable remote access to Mesa Water IT services by utilizing only company-issued standard laptop hardware and applications.
• T2Tech leveraged their remote staff IT management toolset to implement a solution to secure, manage, and monitor both the laptop devices and other variables such as the quality of individual staff internet services and data security for misplaced devices.
• T2Tech was also able to provide Mesa Water District staff remote support for their transition to their new workspace and IT devices.

T2Tech successfully utilized its hybrid waterfall/Agile project management methodology and ability to design and deploy enterprise-capable technology solutions to meet the client requirements within the prescribed budget and schedule.

Daily scrums, end-of-day retrospectives, and constant communications with Mesa Water management were required to support the urgent, dynamic nature of this challenge, to provide a safe work environment during this pandemic. Project dashboards were developed for real-time progress tracking of each device as they were configured and provisioned to Mesa Water staff.

As part of this process, each device was properly inventoried, documented, and added to the IT operations management and monitoring environment. The provisioning process was designed to provide orientation and training sessions aligned with their specific department operating procedures. This process was also designed with a no-contact process, safe distancing, sanitizing, and taking the necessary precautions for employees to collect and receive training on their new IT devices.

The Solution

As a part of their 5-year IT strategic plan, Mesa Water District had effectively collaborated with their long-standing IT partner, T2Tech, to invest in and implement a best practice IT architecture and operational management model in 2015 to support their strategic initiatives.

"Our ability to leverage our existing IT capabilities to support this timely transition was a critical success factor to meeting the challenges presented by the COVID-19 crisis."

Denise Garcia, Administrative Services Manager, Mesa Water District

Together, Mesa Water and T2Tech were able to quickly — within 3 days — assess how they would leverage their existing IT capabilities to transition their operational model to manage employees, systems, equipment, and customer needs virtually. Recognizing the scale and magnitude of such a transition, T2Tech utilized their hybrid Agile methodology to quickly develop a plan and solution to move the organization's staff remote without interrupting service to their customers.

Results and Benefits

Following all CDC guidelines, T2Tech trained half of the company on the new devices in one week, and the second half of the company the following week, allowing the entire organization to completely shift to the new remote work program within two weeks.

"During a transition to a virtual workplace, it's important for organizations to expect certain shifts in company culture, such as unforeseeable issues surrounding IT hardware and connectivity. As part of making this transition for Mesa Water District, the T2Tech team of experts helped leadership confront these challenges head-on with understanding, flexibility, and most importantly, solutions."

Kevin Torf, CEO, T2Group

Mesa Water has not only adapted its entire business operation to the current crisis but now has a forward-thinking approach to the future of Mesa Water's workforce, should additional transitions be required in the future. By resisting any shortcuts during the transition to Mesa Water's remote work program, T2Tech was able to take the deployment a step further to implement lasting solutions.

Your Future Is Our Focus

T2Tech partners with pioneering organizations like Mesa Water who are determined not only to thrive in the future but to actively shape it. Together, we uncover what's next and unlock the power of technology to transform aspirations into tangible realities with profound business impact. Our driving force is a shared passion to help our clients discover and activate their future. We craft technology solutions that bridge the gap between what is and what can be. Then, we get the job done.

Overview

Maintaining an on-site data center is costly and requires continuous upkeep. However, a transition to the cloud is not as easy as "lift and shift" for healthcare and public-sector organizations.

In this case study, we document how our dedicated team at T2Tech helped Mesa Water District complete a data center migration to the cloud using Amazon Web Services (AWS), providing insights you can apply to your health system or other large organization.

Mesa Water District (Mesa Water®), a key water provider in Southern California, chose T2Tech because of our long-standing reputation for expertise in data-center modernization. Their work is critical to the health and safety of more than 100,000 people. As they undertook their data-center refresh, our T2 consultants walked them through the relative benefits of on-site versus remote (cloud) data centers, the selection of an appropriate cloud solution, and the planning and execution of the migration itself.

Decision to Migrate to a Cloud Data Center

Traditional, on-site data centers have distinct advantages — more control and the ability to customize infrastructure, including hardware, applications, network connectivity, and databases. However, ownership brings substantial burdens: backup power, cooling, repairs, upgrades, physical security, and equipment replacement when end of life.

In contrast, cloud data centers offer several compelling benefits. Most notably, they offer lower capital expenditures (CapEx), improved scalability, and reduced operational needs. On-site data centers and their equipment can be costly to maintain and need to be replaced on average every five years. Cloud allows you to use only what you need, resulting in a significant reduction in overall costs. For Mesa Water®, these considerations made a cloud data center the obvious choice.

Selection of Amazon Web Services

The next challenge was helping Mesa Water® choose an appropriate cloud solution — one capable of scalability and security while minimizing cost. T2Tech recommended Amazon Web Services, which boasts a superior track record of migrating traditional IT, especially when it comes to compliance and ease of use. AWS cloud data center services make use of industry best practices for IT security and compliance, and AWS adopters gain a competitive edge through features including disaster recovery and easier long-term maintenance.

Importantly for Mesa Water®, AWS also costs less for more efficiency. T2Tech conducted an assessment to provide a total cost of ownership estimate and found that Mesa Water® would enjoy at least a 33% cost reduction in the first five years alone. As Mesa Water® uses a Windows server, T2Tech recommended they adopt Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) — a reliable, scalable, and secure web service that was a perfect fit for their needs.

Planned, Purposeful Migration

T2Tech's experience with modernizing data centers enabled us to plan and execute this large-scale migration using our proprietary project management methodology to keep the project on time and on budget. The migration process followed three phases adapted from Amazon Web Services: Assess, Mobilize, and Migrate.

Phase 1: Assess

• Identify security and compliance requirements
• Survey the functional needs and technical specifications
• Determine the available financial resources

Phase 2: Mobilize

• Engage T2Tech experts for specific needs
• Decide on procedures to minimize risk (e.g., data loss)
• Determine the AWS tools appropriate for migration

Phase 3: Migrate

• Execute migration with full-service redundancy
• Iterate tasks until the old system is modernized on the cloud
• Ensure normal operations during migration

Results

Mesa Water® has been able to move beyond the expensive cycle of replacing new infrastructure every 3 to 5 years. The Mesa Water® IT executives are pleased with the increased efficiency of their new cloud management software and security posture.

T2Tech is a leader in the practical application of technology for healthcare and a range of other industries. Since 2006, T2Tech has consistently delivered quality consulting and management advisory services to business executives and IT leaders. The T2Tech team balances business and IT needs, uses a proven agile methodology, oversees projects from assessment to post-implementation, and practices transparency in everything they do.