Customer Case Study: Microsoft Azure Disaster Recovery (DR) Solutions - Healthcare

Customer Case Study: Microsoft Azure Disaster Recovery (DR) Solutions – Healthcare

CLIENT – HEALTHCARE VERTICAL

Non-profit healthcare provider based in Southern Florida, offering ambulatory and other care services to members who are enrolled in Medicaid, self-insured employee health plans and programs that serve children with special health care needs.

CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

United Data Technologies (UDT) is currently supporting a Microsoft Azure Disaster Recovery initiative for this Non-profit Healthcare Provider Client. This is an essential project for the organization for effective information management, and with its’ headquarters located in Southern Florida and susceptible to extreme weather conditions (hurricanes) that can impact critical services.

UDT’s Azure DR initiative for the company’s Non-profit Healthcare Provider Client commenced eighteen (18) months prior to the writing of this document. The project followed preliminary discovery and findings to determine the best possible, and most cost-effective, disaster recovery support for this non-profit healthcare service provider. At the conclusion of the assessment phase, it was determined that delivery of DR services for Non-profit Healthcare Provider Client through new, upgraded, hardware-based technologies, on-premises (“on-prem”), was not optimal financially or advisable from a physical location perspective. Even with virtual or co-located replication and failover, placing the primary DR hardware entirely on Non-profit Healthcare Provider Client main Southern Florida campus, with annual concerns about hurricanes and other inclement weather during the season of July to October, would not guarantee maximum uptime, while also representing prohibitive cost.

UDT’s account manager collaborated with the Non-profit Healthcare Provider Client’s IT leadership to provide scope and pricing for an alternative to the costly, hardware-based paradigm with powerful Microsoft Azure enterprise-scale disaster recovery services. UDT proposed to utilize Azure Site Recovery, with its’ built-in disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS). Microsoft states that Azure Site Recovery, with “replication, failover, and recovery processes through Site Recovery,” keeps applications fully “running during planned and unplanned outages.”

Closed Date: September or October 2017
Vertical/Region: Non-profit, Health services; Southern Florida

CO-SELL OPPORTUNITY

United Data Technologies (UDT) is a Microsoft Gold-competency Partner. UDT’s project for this Non-profit Healthcare Provider Client, and for all Microsoft Azure Disaster Recovery initiatives, represents “a cloud-based disaster recovery solution from Azure that provides data backup and high availability to protect all major IT systems.” UDT’s collaborative solutions with Microsoft also offer a “best-in-class Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) to ensure application availability and fast recovery.”

AZURE DISASTER RECOVERY PROOF POINTS

1. SCALE AND COST SAVINGS:

o The originally-planned tool set for the UDT hardware-based, on-prem datacenter version of the data center build, upgrades and modernizations would have run Zerto Virtual Replication.

o Moving the whole operation into the datacenter would have cost approximately $150,000 – $200,000. The Non-profit Healthcare Provider Client didn’t have the budget for a project of this size from a CapEx perspective.

o The Microsoft Azure solution proposed to UDT’s Non-profit Healthcare Provider Client was approximately $50,000; this, representing savings of approximately $100k to $150k from the hardware-focused solution.

2. TECHNOLOGY:

o Azure DR was tailored by UDT specifically to provide rapid installation and upgrades, rapid recovery, and with specifications how to return to original state.

UNIQUE CHARACTERISTICS

A comprehensive run book was designed by UDT to help the Non-profit Healthcare Provider Client to move to and run DR and other related operations in Microsoft Azure Cloud.
Additionally, the run book addressed/ addresses compliance and regulatory issues and RPO and RTO. As Microsoft states: “A good plan takes advantage of Azure features and augments them with application-specific strategies. The chosen response is determined by the importance of the application, the recovery point objective (RPO), and the recovery time objective (RTO).” UDT’s custom Azure DR run book for the Non-profit Healthcare Provider Client was tailored for RPO and RTO according to The Client’s unique compliance requirements.

ONGOING ENGAGEMENT

For budgetary and other considerations, UDT currently refreshes the Azure DR environment every (six) 6 months. This is a unique, cost-effective tailoring of Azure Managed Services to refresh the Non-profit Healthcare Provider Client’s infrastructure.
UDT’s Non-profit Healthcare Provider Client is currently exploring budget to engage UDT on a quarterly basis for refreshes, as Azure AD is updated on a quarterly calendar.

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