Founded in 1999, ClearBenefits has more than a decade of experience providing best-of-breed benefits management technology, support, and integrated administration services that support the delivery of benefits for over 150,000 employees. Customers include industry leaders such as Lam Research, General Atomics, Equinix, Blue Shield of California, and Sutter Health. ClearBenefits’ technology and services packages are fully integrated to provide end-to-end benefits outsourcing for employers of all sizes. ClearBenefits automates the timeconsuming and complex world of health plan administration, through a rules-based system that guides employees step by step through the enrolment process via an intuitive online portal that facilitates information sharing between employers, insurance carriers and other stakeholders. The company also manages the annual employee enrolment process as well as life-event changes throughout the year.

1. case study
ClearBenefits Improves Reliability and
Business Continuity with Dimension Data
industry: ClearBenefits Automates the “We didn’t have the desired visibility over
the process of installing, managing, and
Professional Services Employee Benefits Enrollment
maintaining the hardware and software,
Process
country: and another challenge was monitoring
Founded in 1999, ClearBenefits has more and uptime measurements,”
United States
than a decade of experience providing says Frank Dellé, Director of Systems
business challenge: best-of-breed benefits management and Security.
Complexities associated with technology, support, and integrated
administration services that support the By 2009, it became clear the company was
managing an entire infrastructure for interested in raising performance levels
service-driven performance. Lack of delivery of benefits for over 150,000
employees. Customers include industry and reducing service interruptions due to
visibility over the process of installing, multiple single points of failure.
managing, and maintaining the leaders such as Lam Research, General
hardware and software. Atomics, Equinix, Blue Shield of California, “It wasn’t pretty giving root cause
and Sutter Health. ClearBenefits’ analysis reports to our executive team.
solution: technology and services packages are fully The unified concern was the potential
Appoint a SaaS and cloud hosting integrated to provide end-to-end benefits negative impact to the perception of
provider that can deliver higher outsourcing for employers of all sizes. ClearBenefits,” says Dellé.
reliability and enable cost-effective ClearBenefits automates the time- At that point the forecast to grow and
business continuity consuming and complex world of health to meet the demands of an expanding
plan administration, through a rules-based client base made it clear to seek another
services: system that guides employees step by direction.
Dimension Data Managed Hosting step through the enrolment process via
with Application Operations, Cloud an intuitive online portal that facilitates Solution
Hosting, and Cloud-based Disaster information sharing between employers,
Recovery insurance carriers and other stakeholders. ClearBenefits searched the managed
hosting services market for a provider that
The company also manages the annual could offer a high level of reliability and
employee enrolment process as well as
results: management skills. One of the providers
life-event changes throughout the year. they evaluated was Dimension Data .
• Internal efficiencies that allow
ClearBenefits’ small team to “Dimension Data demonstrated the
become more productive and
Challenge: Increasing Reliability highest level of service with a 100%
proactive and Availability uptime guarantee, which was a major
• Flexibility to accommodate Historically, ClearBenefits outsourced its selling point,” says Dellé. “They also
requests, technical and operational IT services to support its business and offered to partner with us to create
expertise, and professional the Benefits Platform application. As the the best solution for our business. In
deployment of services for new demands for uptime and service quality addition, Dimension Data provided
requests for servers, storage and networking a level of service and attention that
devices grew, so did the complexities with we didn’t think we’d get with a large
• Ability to manage to seasonal peak provider like IBM.”
managing the entire infrastructure for
performance
service-driven performance.

2. case study
“Dimension Data demonstrated the highest level of service with
a 100% uptime guarantee, which was a big selling point. They
also had a very accommodating process by which we could work
together in a partnership.”
Frank Dellé, Director of Systems and Security
ClearBenefits chose Dimension Impact: Reliability, Security, and
Data Managed Hosting in late 2009.
Productivity
ClearBenefits operates a traditional
infrastructure with a multi-tiered network Moving to Dimension Data has had
that spans from front-end load balancers a dramatic effect on the reliability
through a DMZ containing the web servers and availability of ClearBenefits’ SaaS
to a secured back-end network where the application.
database resides. VPNs connect various “Before Dimension Data we were able
sites to the back-end. to offer an SLA of just 95%. Today we
“That stack is entirely managed by have a stable site and deliver an uptime
Dimension Data ,” says Dellé. of 99.9%, which is a testament to
Dimension Data ,” says Dellé.
Dimension Data provides performance
monitoring, OS patch management, Handling personal health information for
security management, hardware 150,000 individuals is a big responsibility.
deployment, and much of the application ClearBenefits must comply with Heath
deployment. Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
(HIPAA) regulations.
“We have a robust and mature process
for handing off major software release “The security requirements are strict,”
updates to Dimension Data .” says Dellé.“ Dimension Data helps us
meet them with its SAS70 Type II and
Dellé also makes use of all of the native
HIPAA Business Associate certifications.”
support tools provided by Dimension Data
, including the trouble ticketing portal. The recent addition of Dimension Data
More recently, ClearBenefits turned to Cloud-based Disaster Recovery services
Dimension Data to provide on-demand has allowed ClearBenefits to put in place
business continuity capabilities. Dimension a business continuity strategy that meets
Data helped ClearBenefits set up a hybrid their clients’ requirements at a price
cloud using its cloud offering for the one-tenth the cost of a typical business
public-facing front end, and a private continuity implementation.
database back-end. The business continuity Leveraging Dimension Data has led
site is hosted separately from their primary to internal efficiencies that allow
site. Data updates are shipped to the site ClearBenefits’ small team to become more
daily. If a catastrophic failure occurs at the productive and proactive. Dellé credits
primary site, the cloud infrastructure at the Dimension Data with the flexibility to
secondary site can be activated in less than accommodate requests, technical and
24 hours. operational expertise, and professional
“It’s very cost-effective,” says Dellé. “We deployment of services for new requests.
don’t pay for any ongoing management ”Dimension Data has enabled
costs except reserving hardware and ClearBenefits to manage to seasonal
pre-configured cloud instances.” peak performance.”
ClearBenefits brings up the secondary
site several times a year for testing,
refreshing the database, and upgrading the
ClearBenefits application software to the
latest release.
CS / 09/12 © Copyright Dimension Data 2012 For further information visit: www.dimensiondata.com/solutions