One man's plan to save $1 billion through shared networks

Some pride themselves on thinking outside of the box. James Hettrick doesn’t even know where the box is.

Hettrick, the IT director for the city of Loma Linda, Calif., has already spearheaded an initiative that brought a law mandating fiber-optic cabling be installed in any new construction or substantial renovations in his city, the better to connect to the 1Gbps fiber that links residential and commercial buildings alike to a 10G fiber core. Loma Linda’s Connected Community Program is intended to spur the local economy, help out its medical research institutions, and improve quality of life for residents. The project made Hettrick a Network World All-Star for 2006 and earned him a seat at the All-Star roundtable discussion at the recent Network World IT Roadmap event in Dallas.

At the roundtable, Hettrick touched on a couple of other projects with which he’s now involved, including the enterprise service bus (ESB). The ESB builds on the Connected Community Program, taking advantage of its fiber rings, an extensive wireless network and VPN capabilities to enable the sharing of resources and information among various community constituencies. As he envisions it, the ESB could result in savings of $1 billion for the medical community alone by enabling a more effective use of its resources. At the same time, Hettrick is organizing the United States Connected Community Association, a forum in which communities of various sorts can share information and experiences in hopes of making more informed technology decisions.

Everybody on the bus

In a follow-up interview, Hettrick explained the thinking behind both efforts, noting both are in the formative stages. But that won’t likely be the case for long, as Hettrick seems to know how to get things done fast.

For the ESB project, he has pulled together Loma Linda University, along with the three branches of the Loma Linda University Medical Center, a Veterans Administration hospital, a K-12 academy, the local chamber of commerce and a new specialty heart and surgery hospital, along with representatives of the city and a local broadcasting company. “These aren’t small groups,” he says. “And it has to be the CIO who represents each group, so we can get to final decisions as we sit there.”

Click to see: James Hettrick

The idea is for participating organizations to offer certain resources for use by other participants and to connect to each other via open source, standards-based connections. For example, perhaps one member has a printer capable of printing large banners. It could create a module that other community members who want to use the printer can employ to access the printer remotely. “You could actually print directly to the printer in a queue; it doesn’t have to be touched by a human,” Hettrick says. “Through a [virtual] LAN, you just use it as your print shop.”

Financial concerns will have to be worked out in such instances, given that toner and maintenance isn’t free, but the ESB concept also has the potential to save enormous sums of money. Healthcare is a prime example for Loma Linda, given the area is home to a number of major health care facilities, including the only level one trauma center serving four counties. If one organization offers a service for remote monitoring of vital signs and remote sensing technology, nursing home, assisted living facilities and the like could use the ESB to tap into that service.