SUMMARY
Steady market growth was creating data and infrastructure management challenges for Sleep Health, prompting the company to seek a more flexible, cost-efficient solution. Working with BACS, Sleep Health was able to consolidate its growing volumes of data to a cloud-based server environment. The upgrade has helped the company improve scalability, increase efficiency, and bolster security to meet increasingly strict compliance mandates.
INTRODUCTION
Keeping databases running efficiently, reliably and with high availability can be a tedious, time-consuming task. Sleep Health, a company that specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders, found itself waging that battle on a daily basis.
As the company expanded its operations and added more locations, the cost of managing its IT infrastructure increased as well. With the number of individual SQL databases deployed at each company location continuing to grow, Sleep Health realized it needed a more flexible, efficient approach to managing its growing data volumes and escalating infrastructure environment.
CHALLENGE
To gain insight into the sleep patterns and potential sleep abnormalities of its patients, Sleep Health uses proprietary sleep analysis software as part of its diagnosis and treatment procedure. To run the software, technicians are required to either access the program through an Internet connection or use remote software to log into the individual workstations at each site.
Sleep Health needed a more scalable server infrastructure that could more efficiently manage its growing application workload demands and deliver faster processing of increasingly large data volumes. As a healthcare provider, another pressure point for Sleep Health was consistently meeting the data protection and privacy requirements outlined in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA).
While the need for better performance was clear, the sheer volume of data also presented some unique challenges for Sleep Health. Nearly six terabytes of patient data needed to be managed in accordance with HIPAA guidelines, but the company’s spiraling database environment was making that task increasingly more difficult.
“We knew we needed to manage our data more efficiently and began looking for a way to streamline this process and consolidate our databases without adding more complexity and technical resources to our existing infrastructure,” said Sleep Health.
SOLUTION
To help improve the performance and efficiency of its data infrastructure, BACS worked with Sleep Health to consolidate its server environment and migrate its growing volumes of data into a more flexible cloud-based solution.
BACS also helped Sleep Health implement a complete PC refresh across all of its sites; upgrade to next-generation firewalls; implement wireless backups to improve network reliability; and conduct a due diligence evaluation for a new ERP platform.
RESULTS
Consolidating its data infrastructure into a cloud-based server environment has helped Sleep Health improve data management and strengthen its data security with confidential patient files and databases now protected behind highly secure cloud infrastructure. The flexible cloud-based server helps ease bandwidth constraints, allowing technicians to more quickly and easily access and run its sleep analysis software on individual workstations at any point in time.
“Our ability to easily scale resources in the cloud gives us the agility we need to respond quickly to new growth opportunities,” says Sleep Health. “We can quickly add new databases without the capital and management expenses that often accompany new infrastructure deployments.”
The BACS team was able to implement Sleep Health’s extensive PC refresh with minimal disruption to operations and involvement of internal IT staff. As a sleep treatment provider, much of Sleep Health’s work is conducted during the middle of night and on weekends, so having reliable, around-the-clock IT availability and support was critical for this project. BACS was able to easily meet this demand without any change in its current workflow or scope of capabilities.
With its in-depth ERP due diligence assessment, BACS was able to help Sleep Health vet multiple ERP platforms. The detailed evaluation provided the company with valuable insight into the true cost of ownership, resource commitments, integration requirements, and how well each solution aligned with the company’s overall business strategy.
“There’s a lot we can attribute to BACS in terms of their ability to surpass our expectations for this project,” said Sleep Health. “The deep technical expertise of BACS’s consulting team proved instrumental in helping us clearly define our business requirements, understand the specific problems we were trying to solve, plan for future growth, and manage our expectations from a technology perspective.”
The server migration has provided Sleep Health with more scalable operations, improved data management efficiency, enhanced network performance, and helped strengthened its data security. The ability of BACS to consistently deliver high quality service and expert guidance has helped it maintain a 90 percent plus satisfactory rating since bringing Sleep Health onboard.
“It was really important for us to have the same team working on all these projects for continuity and consistency, “says Sleep Health. “That’s worked out really well for us. BACS clearly understands our strategy and the goals we’re trying to achieve, which makes for a truly strong relationship.”
Consolidating Sleep Health’s databases into a cloud environment has helped streamline its data management capabilities to meet HIPAA requirements and better position the company for future growth. Meanwhile, reducing the burden of managing multiple databases and onsite infrastructure has helped the company achieve significant cost savings.
