Case Study
ACUSTAF
Industry: Labor management
Acustaf offers a complete labor management solution, which encompasses everything from scheduling staff, tracking time and attendance, managing workloads and even handling staff budget and benefit issues. The Acustaf solution presents a 360° approach that addresses all staffing issues.
Acustaf has concentrated on the healthcare industry, with 60 major hospitals as customers, but their solution is also used by retail and manufacturing companies. Because Acustaf tracks staff in real time, their solution is appropriate for any industry where staff is on duty 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The Acustaf solution was initially developed in the 1980s, and has grown to include more functionality in the years since its initial introduction. Acustaf ran on Informix until last year, when the company ported their solution to Ingres.
Terry Suby, the president of Acustaf, explains the reason for the switch to Ingres. "Ingres has all the features and robustness that we absolutely require in our production databases. In addition, Ingres 2006 is easy to administer, which means our solution is easier to implement and use. Finally, the Ingres open source model means we can offer our solution at a more competitive price, since we do not have to pay any licensing fees."
Initial deployments of the Ingres-based solution have gone very well, with systems in production at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Queens, as well as North General Hospital in New York, their first hosted site. These customers have seen significant improvements in performance, and Acustaf has gained a lot more flexibility in offering their product. "We have started offering our solution to customers as a service, making it easy for them to sign up more people as needed," says Suby. "The Ingres open source model means that we can offer our software as a service without being bogged down with ever increasing license fees and administration."
Suby is also enthusiastic over the development of a software appliance, dubbed Ingres Icebreaker by Ingres Corporation. "The whole concept of the appliance extends the financial and ease-of-user advantages of Ingres to another level. We are actively evaluating Project Icebreaker as a key part of our overall infrastructure."