Northeastern Healthcare Data Organization Modernizes IT with AWS
A regional health information organization partnered with TierPoint to modernize its IT infrastructure on AWS for data accessibility and efficiency.
Introduction
As healthcare organizations continue to evolve, the need for secure and efficient data management has never been more critical. A regional health information organization, which plays a crucial role in providing critical data to clinicians and patients, was confronted with mounting challenges due to its outdated IT infrastructure. The legacy systems were struggling to meet growing data requirements, resulting in compromised performance, scalability, and cost-effectiveness.
In response, the organization collaborated with TierPoint to modernize its infrastructure by migrating it to Amazon Web Services (AWS). This strategic transition significantly improved data accessibility, streamlined operational processes, and ensured long-term adaptability—essential in an industry where real-time information is key to enhancing patient outcomes.
Challenges
In healthcare, having real-time access to clinical data is vital. This organization required its IT environment to support various functions, including secure clinician access, data-driven decision-making, and anonymized insights for research and public health. However, their legacy infrastructure presented several challenges:
Scalability Issues: The existing VMware-based system necessitated duplicating whole environments for different use cases, which was time-consuming, costly, and unable to scale efficiently with growing data demands.
Performance Problems: Complex legacy software led to unpredictable system behavior, including slow data writes, transaction conflicts, and memory issues, compromising data integrity and access speed.
Infrastructure Constraints: Storage limitations hindered maintaining necessary VMware snapshots and complicated backup and recovery processes.
Data Replication Bottlenecks: Slow data transfer and poor network configurations resulted in inadequate replication throughput, impacting operational agility.
Software Conflicts: Resource competition between critical backup and replication agents led to performance issues and potential reliability risks.
Without a modern infrastructure to address these issues, the organization faced increased costs, inefficiencies, and potential disruptions in delivering high-quality healthcare data in a timely manner.
Solution
To overcome their challenges, the organization teamed up with TierPoint, a seasoned AWS partner with extensive experience in VMware migrations. Together, they developed and implemented a modernized IT infrastructure on AWS by migrating the existing VMware environment to a more scalable cloud platform using Amazon EC2 and Amazon EBS. Notable enhancements included:
Enhanced Data Replication: Switching to agentless replication reduced conflicts and improved data transfer speed.
Improved Performance: System quiescing during migration resolved memory and synchronization issues.
Strategic Storage Management: Staggering VM replication eased storage constraints and ensured a smooth transition.
Network Optimization: Bandwidth utilization was optimized to increase replication speed and reduce downtime.
Infrastructure-as-Code: An IaC solution using Terraform was developed, allowing for rapid deployment of environments for future testing and innovation.
By modernizing its infrastructure with AWS and TierPoint, the organization achieved a secure, scalable, and high-performance solution tailored to its healthcare needs, enabling more efficient data-driven healthcare operations.
Results
The organization's successful migration to AWS enabled them to provide faster and more reliable access to vital healthcare data while maintaining long-term flexibility. The modernized infrastructure now supports a variety of functionalities, including ad-hoc reporting, data transformation, research initiatives, and agile development environments, fostering ongoing innovation.
Additionally, the Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) approach enables on-demand deployment of new environments, reducing provisioning time and improving operational agility.
With TierPoint's guidance, the organization overcame infrastructure constraints, lowered costs, and established a scalable foundation for future expansion—ensuring that clinicians, researchers, and patients continue to receive rapid, secure, and reliable access to healthcare data.
At A Glance
Industry
Healthcare
Technology
AWS Public Cloud
Challenges
In healthcare, ensuring secure and reliable access to clinician and patient data is critical. This health information organization required a modern IT solution to replace aging systems and enhance long-term data performance.
Solution
TierPoint worked closely with the organization’s IT leaders to develop a cloud deployment strategy, migrating their existing VMware environment to a modernized infrastructure in AWS.
Results
TierPoint modernized their IT infrastructure on AWS, improving data accessibility, performance, and scalability for future growth.
Keep Exploring
Visit our knowledge center to explore expert insights and thought leadership to power your digital breakaway.