Why network centralization matters

8/9/2019 Why network centralization matters

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IntroductionIT teams at healthcare organizations are no strangers todoing more with lessits an everyday reality. Yet with theeconomy in such dire straits, CxOs and IT departmentsare expected to support revenue-generating ideas inthe form of new resource-intensive applications andprocesses with fewer staff and tighter budgets.

Hospitals are going through a tough time right now. Theyare trying to improve patient care through innovation,but are finding it to be difficult because the ecosystemof doctors, patients, medical suppliers and insurancecompanies are all on separate systems, says ZeusKerravala, senior vice president at the Yankee Group.

These ecosystems are often a hodgepodge of wired andwireless voice, video and data technologies that are notonly built as silos, but managed that way, as well. Ashospitals have increased the amount of nodes and usersthey support, the more difficult their environments havebecome to manage. Many are seeing a level of complexitytheyve never experienced before, he says.

Add to this that healthcare is one of the most highly

regulated industries throughout the world with stringentrequirements for end-to-end data security and privacyand it is very clear that CxOs and their IT teams need tograb hold of their networks and manage and securethem as a unified whole.

You can achieve this goal using centralized tools, suchas H3C Intelligent Management Center (IMC) software,that enables health care organizations to proactively

manage their entire enterprise. Instead of trying to handlethese environments individually, centralized tools arebuilt-in and automated to ease the management burden,Kerravala says. Specifically, he says, this burden is easedby deploying a centralized tool to automate not only per-formance monitoring, but also change, configuration,policy and patch management throughout the network.

Tying Together thePatchwork QuiltFor the past few years, healthcare organizations havestruggled mightily to make healthcare more affordableand efficient by making records more accessible to nurses,doctors and patients; enabling real-time, remote diagnoses;and improving billing systems. Traditionally, that hasmeant quickly constructing islands of ad hoc wired andwireless voice, video and data networks on-site and atremote locations.

While that approach seemed reasonable in the past, itsbeen made unsupportable by recent developments such asthe need for end-to-end visibility to assure compliance

with global security and privacy mandates and to stream-line business processes. The past few years have alsoseen a need for speed in deploying new enterprise-wideapplications to compete with alternative healthcareproviders, a requirement that is severely impeded whensystems are disconnected from each other.

As a first step to solving this problem, CxOs and theirteams have consolidated infrastructure and staffing intodata centers, serving applications, storage and expertiseto remote and branch sites from centralized resourcepools. However, without centralized management to

automate deployment, configuration and oversight of datacenter and remote operations, consolidation inevitablyfalls short of its promise.

Network management tools are critical to understandinghow the network operates today and how new applicationsor procedures will impact it in the future. If you dontput the management tools and framework in place first,

HEALTHCARE SOLUTIONS:

WHY NETWORK CENTRALIZATION MATTERS

WHITE PAPER

ContentsIntroduction 1Tying Together the Patchwork Quilt 1Remote Administration 2Laudable Audits 2Boosting User Adoption 2Inside IMC 3Supplement: An Interview with IMCProduct Management 3


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2 HEALTHCARE SOLUTIONS: WHY NETWORK CENTRALIZATION MATTERS

youll never have an historical reference point tointelligently do this, Kerravala says.

Its a truism that Mike Lindsay, manager of networkservices at Fraser Health in Vancouver, B.C., knows alltoo well. Fraser, which has a dozen acute care hospitalsand more than a hundred other medical offices, hasundergone several mergers in the past decade and hasworked hard to bring the many facets of IT, includingsupport for clinical, biomedical engineering and otherhospital staff, under a single umbrella.

In the last year alone, weve brought on more sites andthat has definitely added to our network complexity, hesays. After all, with each new site comes new applications,users and infrastructure that have to be blended intothe overall enterprise. To accommodate the growingnetwork, Lindsay says the structure was originally keptpretty flat so that it didnt require a lot of administration.But that soon became unrealistic as disconnected systemsled to inefficient processes. When you do things manually,there is a lack of consistency and reliability gets sacrificed,he says.

Lindsay and his team are in the process of deployingthe IMC solution, which they are confident will ensurestandardization across all the organizations sites andallow them to develop and maintain a consistent imageamong all their software and hardware. Doing so willease the provisioning of new systems, troubleshooting,updates, patches and disaster recovery. And automatingthese tasks is sure to be a big money-saver for Fraser,allowing IT resources that would be devoted to manualconfigurations to be used on more strategic projects.

A shift from reactive to proactive IT has helped networkmanager Arie Huberman and his team at Israels AsafHarofeh Medical Center (AHMC) stay competitive. Theirmain focus at the 800-bed facility has been on ensuringbusiness continuity so that critical services, such asthe Picture Archiving and Communications System andElectronic Healthcare Records, will run in local andremote locations regardless of a disaster or emergency.Its simply impossible for a modern hospital to existtoday without a totally reliable network. It even affectsour ability to admit patients, he says.

The only way AHMC can guarantee failover, load-balancing,redundancy and other network-saving techniques is touse centralized management atop its wired and wirelessinfrastructure to monitor the health of the network, alertthe team and automatically remediate problems.

The network is already paying for itself, and has vastlyincreased throughput and productivity of many hospitaldepartments and staff. Its saving lives! he says.

Remote AdministrationWhile AHMC homed in the use of centralized networkmanagement to promote business continuity, EnglandsNational Health Service Walsall focused on deliveringan array of applications, including mobile imaging andelectronic health records, to more than 90 remote sites.

To save costs, NHS Walsall had consolidated its IT team,so it depends on centralized network management tohelp maintain each sites network infrastructure remotely.The centralized tools also help ensure fast and secure

access to colleague and patient information from head-quarters and each site. In fact, the staff uses mobile PCsequipped with PACS and connected to the wireless networkto view patient x-rays bedside. Its much more effectivefor staff to have full access to the medical portal and reviewresults with the patients themselves. Patients like it, too,and it makes for a much better patient experience, saysMark Taylor, associate director of NHS Walsall IT services.

Laudable AuditsAnother goal of most healthcare organizations is to complywith the myriad global mandates, a mind-boggling taskespecially if IT staff have to travel to each system toset policies and then check each systems log to ensurethose policies are being enforced.

When youre dealing with separate tools, you get intothe whole nightmare of creating linkages and scripts foreach new mandate. Maintaining that is difficult and iftheres one weak link, your whole organization could bein jeopardy, Kerravala says.

Additionally, separate systems make a concise audit trailimpossible. With the use of centralized network manage-ment tools, compliance reporting spans a heterogeneousenvironment, enabling the comprehensive documentationauditors require.

By centralizing and automating its network oversightincluding change, configuration, patch and policymanagementFraser will be able to set and enforcepolicies in accordance with the most stringent securityand privacy mandates, including British ColumbiasFreedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.


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Boosting User AdoptionLack of visibility into the enduser experience can forcehealthcare organizations to abandon revolutionary new

advances in patient care. For instance, one hospitalencountered poor user adoption of a voice over IPapplication among its nursing staff. It turned out thatthe nurses were frustrated by dropped calls caused bynetwork issues. Had the hospitals IT team employedcentralized network management tools, they could havepredicted possible latency issues and adjusted the voiceover IP packet priority to ensure much better call quality.

Kerravala says the real impact of centralized networkmanagement, such as that provided by the IMC solution,can be felt prior to application deployment. An under-standing of how the network operates today helps predictthe impact on resources and end users of deployingapplications in the future. If you do this analysis postdeployment, youll risk network outages and lower useradoption rates, he says.

Because these tools are integrated across a heterogeneousenvironment, IT staff can model how the network wouldreact to a new application. Network administrators canthen determine the need for adjustments, includingprovisioning more bandwidth, changing the priority ofdelay-sensitive traffic on the network, or adding moreprocessing power.

Inside IMCIMC provides a comprehensive platform that CxOs and ITteams can use to centralize and unify network manage-ment. Fully integrated with a heterogeneous environment,it gives visibility into the status of resources, servicesand users.

For instance, without effecting network performance orend users, executive decision makers can use IMCsweb-based console to predict the impact of a newapplication, do spot checks on compliance, and seewhich departments are using specific resources tomake sure budgets are properly aligned.

Since IMC software is scalable from 10 to tens ofthousands of devices, new healthcare partners canbe integrated easily into an organizations networkenvironment. And most importantly, the software canbe used to ensure corporate security policies are beingenforced across wired and wireless infrastructures.

Six Steps to Successful CentralizedNetwork Management1. Evaluate the environment. An understanding

of the environment to be managed and whattechnologies will be involvedincluding wiredand wireless voice, video and datais critical.Carefully consider current inventory of resourcesand what will need to be augmented or replaced.Also, examine the expertise of staff so that theaddition of people or training can be included inthe deployment plan.

2. Define project requirements . Before making acommitment to a product, work with the vendorto understand exactly what the network manage-ment deployment will entail. Will it be necessaryto upgrade drivers, operating systems, hardwareand other infrastructure components beforehand?How much staff will be required for the initialtesting and rollout?

3. Phase-in the implementation. Ease into the rolloutdont try to manage everything all at once. Getused to the tools and take the time to set appropriatepolicies and threshold alerts.

4. Baseline the environment. Once the networkmanagement tool is in place, marking configura-tion and infrastructure performance baselines iscritical. If normal operating conditions can beidentified, then management tools can be usedto spot deviations. Baselines also provide bench-marks should issues arise that make restoring anetwork configuration necessary.

5. Plan reporting. One of the most importantbenefits of centralized network management isthe timely availability of relevant information.For instance, if an organization is subject toSarbanes-Oxley regulations, the controls can beset for the acts requirements. If necessary, thetools can also be used to generate reports onuser activities.

6. Dont just set and forget. Revisit the networkmanagement tools to make sure they are atoptimal settings. Use the reports and baselinesto adjust the management environment to gainthe full advantage of automation and oversighttools it provides.


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An Interview with IMC Product ManagementDeploying business-critical, resource-intensive applicationswith tighter budgets and fewer staff challenges many ITteams at healthcare organizations. Les Stuart, IMC productline manager, discussed this issue with Technology EditorSandra Gittlen and explained how centralized networkmanagement is the ideal elixir.

What are the main challenges that healthcare CxOs and theirIT teams will face during the coming year?The biggest challengeand its an ongoing oneis how to domore with less. While there will be exponentially more projectsand users for IT to support, staffing and budgets wont increaseto accommodate these demands. For instance, some healthcareIT teams have to merge remote, satellite and day facilities undertheir larger corporate umbrellas. This means consolidatinginfrastructure, applications and users. In addition, this year manyhealthcare institutions will begin digitizing medical records.Though IDC predicts that those taking this route could see 30%

savings, ramifications include the need to handle security andpatient privacy requirements such as HIPAA. Lastly, CxOs andtheir IT teams are dealing with the proliferation of wirelessand other devices in their networks, as well as the constantpush to extend healthcare networks and make them moreopen and available to patients, medical personnel and admin-istrative staff. All of these realities pose significant integrationand management challenges for IT.

Today, is overall network management and integrationsimpler or more complex?More difficult. Basic infrastructure and integration managementis hard enough, but today privacy and security requirementsnecessitate increased network management. Over the past fiveyears, the adoption of best-of-breed solutions has also added tothe complexity of network management. For instance, a health-care institution in the northwest made a six-figure investmentin server and desktop hardware and software, but it was unableto realize the ROI it anticipated because the applicationandwhat it would take to manage the environmentwas just toocomplex. The organization didnt have the resources to deal24/7 with that one application.

In addition, end users are asking for more bells and whistles ontheir applications, and that kind of flexibility drains IT resources.

So what have IT teams done to address this?Some have tried to accommodate ad hoc networks by buying

an overarching management platform, but that makes it verydifficult to consistently apply critical policies enterprise-wide andcreate a compliance audit trail. Some IT teams lack the in-depth,in-house knowledge needed to manage some of these moremanagement-intensive technologies such as voice over IP. And

there are so many applications fighting for the network that ifhandled incorrectly, things start to break. As an example:digital x-ray transport can require a huge amount of bandwidth.If you havent accounted for that likelihood, then things startto break when that data starts moving around the network. Onehospital found integrating multiple business units voice, videoand data traffic to be so complex that within six months, it decidedto just keep the business units systems running autonomously.That frustration prevented the institution from realizing all thefinancial and business benefits that can result from the usecentralized, proactive network management.

What are the benefits that centralized network managementcan enable?There are so many, but mainly bringing everything under oneumbrella gives you an amazing amount of control and helpsyou deliver quality of service for all local and remote voice,video and data applications. Business-appropriate thresholdscan be set to alert you to network problems before users areimpacted. And compre hensive metrics can be used for fore-

casting, modeling and capacity planning. All these things helpsave time and money and prepare you to tackle new projectsin a strategic manner.

For example, from a single console the IMC tool manages wiredand wireless voice, video and data networks as a unified set ofresources. Other tools either require a separate infrastructure orat least a separate management package. Right there, yourelosing productivity and visibilityyou have to shuffle betweenproducts or take time to learn how to use a complicated pieceof software. Productivity and efficiency are quantifiable metricsso you want a solution that can improve both and enable yourstaff to do more with fewer resources.

IMC software features web-based service components that allowyou to manage a range of heterogeneous network elements,including network access control, voice over IP traffic analysis,service-level agreements, and MPLS and VPN provisioning.Many customers, in fact, have told me that they can use morethan 80% of the features without needing a manual. This easeof use speeds implementation and lowers personnel overhead.

How has IMC software improved healthcare IT environments?A good example is one hospital that wanted to deploy a newMRI application. However, its staff was worried that it wouldde-stabilize other mission critical services and applications.With IMC software, theres now complete visibility and metricsto model the applications infrastructure impact. Therefore, staffcan decide whether to provision more resources or reconfigureother parts of the network to ensure that end users arentnegatively effected by the new application.

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Why network centralization matters