Prospective Quovadx customer seeks your opinions

[David Furnas]

Quovadx is one of two final candidates we are considering for our interfacing provider.  I am interested in your opinions regarding the quality of the Cloverleaf product suite and your experience with Quovadx from a long-term business value perspective; particularly customer care.

Your input is greatly appreciated.  Thank you!

Topic

[James Cobane]

David,

I’ve been working with the Cloverleaf product since 1994, and find it a solid product.  The available toolset and ability to add “custom code” when something doesn’t fall within the normal configuration makes it a powerful suite.  The strength of the Cloverleaf product has always been it’s “assured delivery”; messages don’t get lost.  Additionally, the monitoring and alert functionality make it a powerful solution.  As for support, Quovadx has always been responsive and provided excellent support; you don’t get passed around to different support personnel like alot of other vendors.  Overall, the company seems very customer-focused and active with the user community.

Feel free to contact me by e-mail, and if needed we can discuss via phone.

Good Luck in your decision process.

Thanks,

Jim Cobane

Interface Team Lead

Henry Ford Health Systems

Information Technology

e-mail: jcobane1@hfhs.org

[Anonymous]

David,

Quovadx has the most robust, flexible and escalable interface engine that I could find in the market for the volume of data that we move (+3million messages/day, +1000 interfaces)

The GUIS are easy to understand and very few times we had to ask for support, but it was a positive experience when we did it. We find this forum an excellent support tool. Most of the simple questions, if not all, are already answered and I find easy to search its archives.

Carlos Pardo

Integration Services

BJC HealthCare

cpardo@BJC.ORG

[Michael Lacriola]

I’ve been working with the product since 1995 and am certified level 3. The product is solid, support is good, this discussion board is the best. With all the interfaces I have done, I have not come across a situation that cannot be handled by Cloverleaf.

[Max Drown (Infor)]

The ability to extend Cloverleaf interfaces with scripts is extremely powerful.

-- Max Drown (Infor)

[Anonymous]

I joint the positive side of using Cloverleaf interface engines too. We have been successfully used Cloverleaf to provide not only interface solutions but also integration strategic plan.

However, I would be interested to know if any institutions replacing Cloverleaf with other products, and would appreciate to learn because of what reasons?

---

Hai Nguyen

Mayo Clinic Rochester, MN

[Amol Kulkarni]

David,

We have been using the Cloverleaf interface engine for our Ten years. As for our experience with Customer service- excellent for the few times that we had to make the call.

The GUI’s are easy and most of all the ability to add custom code is a big plus.

[Anonymous]

Hi David,

We too have been using the engine since 1995. It is a very robust tool with all the praises that have been covered in previous replies. Customer service has been excellent the very few times it was needed in the past 11 years. I have not had any working experience with other engines, but it always seems that we have the upper hand and flexablity in data manipulation when interfacing systems. I know that the engine can probably do more than what we use it for.

Also, having this list is a plus and a lifesaver. Everyone including Cloverleaf personal are willing to help out.

Cheers,  😆  Mary.

[Terry Kellum]

We’ve been using the product for 4 years.  We consider the best company support to be support that you never need to use.  I can count on one hand the number of times that we have needed to contact Quovadx for support issues.  I don’t think that integrations will ever go from plug and pray to the state of plug and play, but Cloverleaf gives your technical experts the tool that they need to make integrations work.  The appearance to your organization can look effortless with the right tools.  In my opinion, Cloverleaf is the right tool.

[Anonymous]

Here is my feedback.

In the market there are several EAI products.

EGate (SeeBeyond-Burbank, California), Cloverleaf (Quovadx, Dallas), Rapshody (new vendor).

Having worked on eGate and Clover Leaf, I have listed below some comparison.

1. Learing curve: eGate  Two classes ($2000 per each)

                        Quovadx: 3 classes ($3,000 per each) plus unix, HL7. Total 5 courses may be.

2. Scripting : eGate : Java and Monk. But monk is phased out of 4.5.3

                  CloverLeaf: TCL scripting. There is a learning curve.

                   Rapshody: Java

     In the market there are several Java programmers. Easy to find them. TCL programmers — not many.

3. Alerts monitoring: eGate: it is a additional feature ($15,000). Easy to configure.

                            CloverLeaf: It is integrated with standard product.

4. Monitoring: eGate: It is integrated product with any versions. You can add users and define roles based on operator/system administrator. So that it can be installed in Operator’s room so that they can start/stop if issues arises. But they cannot view/modify the codes.

                 CloverLeaf: It does not come with standard product. Rather it has to be purchased with Advanced Security/Global Monitoring. Which cost about $30,000. It also requires Sun’s LDAP server(extra cost). If an organization uses Active Directory, LDAP is no use. There fore it would not be useful.

5. Performance: eGate and Cloverleaf run perform very well in HP, AIX and Solaris.

6. Installation: eGate – fairly easy.

                     Cloverleaf – require extensive knowledge.

7. Product support: eGate – At times provide hotfix per site. They do not wait for next release.

In conclusion, each product has its own features. Need to decide what are the expectations and what the product has to offer.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

Reggie

[Anonymous]

More feedback.

I forgot to mention few more.

1. Documentation: Cloverleaf – Quovadx  documentation is ok. Only folks who are familiar with the Application can use it. That means it is not user friendly.

             eGate – Anyone can use it. It has plenty of examples.

2. ODBC drivers : Quovadx – It cost about $15,000

                          eGate – free. That means not only ODBC, they have several add-ons modules are free.

3. Platform – Both Cloverleaf and eGate can run on any Unix platforms including Linux.

– Hope this helps.

Reggie

[Jeri Sicari]

Hello All,

I too am not familiar with other engines but have been given the task of evaluating the top 5 for consideration by a client that currently does not have one; relies on the Misys app to provide all the interfacing.  Rhapsody is highly recommended and if (and its a big if!) all other things are equal (performance, reliability, support, documentation) it proports to be much easier to use, configure, administer than CL.  Like it wouldn’t require a lot of resources or expertise to implement and support.  

Anybody want to share on the subject of how to compare features…what questions should I ask to make a vendor show just how good they are.

Thanks!

Jeri-Ann

[Author]

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