Information Systems Infrastructure-Wireless LANs & Wireless WANs

Case Study

BovenIJ Hospital future-proofs IT infrastructure with Huawei 10G Campus Network Solution

Huawei 10GE Campus Network provides a highly-scalable, easy to manage, and ultra-fast network to fit BovenIJ’s technical and Green IT requirements.

Background

BovenIJ hospital is a mid-sized healthcare facility in the northern

part of Amsterdam. The hospital provides a variety of medical

services to Amsterdam and the surrounding community, ranging from

acute emergency care, surgery, obstetrics and birth services, to the

provisioning of basic healthcare, while always using modern and

reliable diagnostic technology and equipment. A primary goal of

BovenIJ is to “be a hospital of friendly character with open lines of

communications and easy accessibility for all."

The hospital has approximately 1,300 employees working from 650

Windows desktops, plus numerous ‘computers on wheels’ and other

mobile devices used to provide patient care and monitoring. The

previous network consisted of mostly 3COM switches and routers.

Numerous critical medical machines are connected to the network,

including operating room equipment, patient monitoring systems, and

imaging systems. The hospital has two data centers on-site, consisting

of x86 servers and redundant data storage. All patient records are

kept on-site, and in the future will be connected to the national EPD

(Electronic Patient Dossier), in accordance with Dutch Ministry of Health

regulations.

Key challenges

By the beginning of this decade, the previous 3COM network at

BovenIJ had begun to show significant signs of age and serious gaps

in reliability. For example, in February of 2011, the network failed

for a single day, leaving patient records and digital communication

unavailable. BovenIJ and its partners were not able to pinpoint the

exact reason for the network outage.

“The technical specs, the throughput, the backplane, the power redundancy….in all the technical requirements of BovenIJ, Huawei was the best. And not to forget, our trust in the system integrator TenICT. They were very open and skillful and created a strong feeling of confidence in the project.”

Richard van Leeuwen, Coordinator of ICT Infrastructure, BovenIJ Ziekenhuis

Customer BovenIJ Hospital

Industry Hospital/ Healthcare provider Solution 2x Huawei S6700 switches for core layer 2x Huawei S5700 switches for aggregation layer eSight Network Management Software

Business Needs A simple, redundant and completely reliable campus • network that will meet the critical requirements of a modern hospital setting A high-speed network that is easily upgradable from • 1G to 10G, that is easily managed as the hospital moves to a wireless environment, and that can provide superior performance for the next 8-10 years.

Results BovenIJ has a completely modern 10G core network • in place which will meet the needs of users (patients, administrators, and healthcare professionals) for the foreseeable future. The network is scalable and flexible with adequate • capacity to provide for existing and future high- bandwidth applications. Power consumption has been reduced via Huawei’s • Green Energy Solutions, and data center space has been reduced by 70%.

Case Study

During the same period, the hospital was facing increasing demands

for network bandwidth, from both internal and external sources. For

example, the transmission of ever-larger digital patient files and the

growing number of connected devices was causing severe network

congestion, while the age of the network made increasing the scale

and capacity impossible. Also, the local Amsterdam metropolitan-

area healthcare WAN network is being upgraded from 1G to 10G. As a

result, all area hospitals are required to upgrade their own networks.

Finally, the ICT management team at BovenIJ, like their colleagues

throughout the world, must anticipate the future requirements that new

applications and services will make to their network. In other words,

the network installed today must be able to accommodate the new

technologies and requirements that the medical community will require

in the next decade.

“We planning for at least an 8 or 10 year window with

this network. We must be ready to accommodate new

services and applications in the future, such as voice or

video on the network. We must be ready for possible

growth of the hospital. Huawei’s campus 10G network

provides us with future-proofing, as it can meet our

capacity, performance and availability requirements for

years to come”

Richard van Leeuwen, Coordinator of ICT Infrastructure,

BovenIJ Ziekenhuis

Solution

Following intensive research and discussion with other ICT colleagues,

BovenIJ outlined the following basic requirements for their network

upgrade:

Reliability, high-performance and high-availability: A network that •

will deliver the highest level of uptime.

Bandwidth and scalability: A network with adequate capacity to •

accommodate high-bandwidth applications, and one that can be

easily upgraded from 1G to 10G.

Simplicity and ease of management: Simple design, simple •

deployment and efficient management/monitoring.

Energy saving and green design: A network with lower power •

consumption and a minimal physical footprint.

Based on the nature of a medical environment, the most important

factor was network reliability. According to Mr. van Leeuwen,

“…reliability is our number one requirement. Network

speed is not #1 and neither is cost. When someone

is on the table in the operating room and the doctors

cannot view the medical images or patient data, then

we have a big problem. The network must be running,

and running without errors or outages.”

The BovenIJ hospital evaluated a variety of systems integrators and

equipment vendors in an attempt to find one that would meet all their

requirements. Their evaluation resulted in an RFP short-list that included

three locally respected systems integrators, partnered with three well-

known global Enterprise technology brands (including Huawei).

The winning solution was proposed by TenICT in cooperation with

Huawei’s Amsterdam Enterprise team. Huawei and TenICT were the

only vendors able to provide the required reliability, scalability and

performance in a cost-effective package, according to BovenIJ’s ICT

management team:

“Every requirement and nice-to-have criteria in the RFP

were met by Huawei and TenICT. No concessions, no

compromises. A very good proposal, good listeners,

and good eye for details”.

The campus network deployed by TenICT consists of 2 Huawei S6700-

48-EI switches at the core layer, and 2 Huawei S5700-52C-EI at

the aggregation layer. As of September, 2012, the access layer are

older 3COM units, but BovenIJ expects to replace these with Huawei

equipment in early 2013 to create a 10G campus network powered

completely by Huawei switches.

BovenIJ also demanded simplified network management and a

monitoring system that could manage both the new vendor’s

equipment (in this case Huawei) and legacy equipment from other

vendors. This requirement was met by Huawei’s eSight Network

Management Software which allows the hospital to manage both the

Huawei switches the legacy 3COM equipment. As BovenIJ replaces

its legacy equipment with more modern wired/wireless Huawei access

switches, eSight will provide even more advanced features and network

management functionalities.

End-User Benefits

The BovenIJ hospital realized a large number of benefits by upgrading

to the Huawei 10G Campus Solution, and will continue to enjoy new

benefits over the life-time of the network. The primary benefit is that

BovenIJ now has an extremely reliable network that has not experienced

Case Study

any significant downtime since its installation. A number of factors go

into this reliability, including fully redundant component design, and

“long-distance stacking” which allows for placement of a two distinct

switches in two separate data centers to create a single logical and

redundant switch. In the event one of the switches encounters a fault,

the second switch can operate the network normally. The patients and

staff at BovenIJ place their trust in the network. This trust is taken very

seriously by Huawei and TenICT, who together realize the importance of

a healthcare/hospital network in life-saving activities.

Another key benefit of the Huawei 10G Campus Solution is its scalability

and flexibility. With the new network in place, the BovenIJ hospital can

quickly scale from a 1G to a 10G environment, ready to accommodate

new services such as telemedicine on the network, voice over IP, and

video over IP. Mr. van Leeuwen explains:

“We choose Huawei because they made it very easy

to migrate from a 1G to 10G network, this was one of

their strongest points. Our requirements for migration

were very specific and strict, and Huawei was the most

flexible, and ultimately the only vendor, able to meet

them”

BovenIJ is also benefiting from a decrease in power costs, as the

Huawei switches are up to 50% more power efficient than those offered

by other vendors. In addition to these significant OPEX savings, Huawei

offered major CAPEX cost savings. According to BovenIJ, the total

cost for the Huawei/TenICT offer was 40% less than the next-closest

competitor.

“Finally a carrier class, non-blocking 10G infrastructure

at an Enterprise price." Plus, with the energy saving we

accomplish in five years, BovenIJ can install WiFi access

points for the complete campus"

Martijn van Deursen, Director Network Management,

TenICT

Furthermore, the Huawei switches take up a fraction of the space of

the previous switches (from 20U to 2U of rack-space in the data center,

a 90% reduction). These smaller switches will allow the hospital to

use the free data center space for new projects, or to lease this excess

capacity to possible technical joint ventures with other Dutch hospitals.

Future Development

The success of the Huawei 10G Campus implementation means that

BovenIJ hospital is confident that its network is now “future-proof” and

that will be able to accommodate the network and business/patient

care requirements of the hospital well into the future:

“More uptime means more business continuity and

means better services for the patients and staff at the

hospital. Furthermore, there will be no hold-ups when

new and innovative technologies are introduced. The

hardware will not be a bottleneck. The throughput

and bandwidth will be there.”

BovenIJ soon will go ahead with the final phase of the project:

installation of the Huawei-provided access layer which will provide

improved wired and wireless connectivity. In the long-term, the hospital

will consider Huawei’s VDI solution, in an ongoing effort to modernize

and deliver superior healthcare services to the residents of Amsterdam.

Case Study

About Huawei Enterprise Business Group

Huawei Enterprise Business Group (“Huawei Enterprise”) is one of the three business groups of Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider. Leveraging Huawei’s strong R&D capabilities and comprehensive technical expertise, Huawei Enterprise provides a wide range of highly efficient customer-centric ICT solutions and services to global vertical industry and enterprise customers across government and public sector, finance, transportation, electric power, energy, commercial businesses, and ISPs. Huawei Enterprise’s innovative and leading solutions cover network infrastructure, unified communications and collaboration (UC&C), cloud computing & data center, enterprise information security, and industry application solutions.

For more information, please visit: www.enterprise.huawei.com

About TenICT

TenICT provides independent and customized services for systems and environments that are required for the proper functioning of your business. The consultants of TenICT specialized in management of complex systems and the technology of the underlying products. They also have much experience with other companies and projects, gained with the technical design of management environments and the implementation of complex infrastructures, in-house, off-shore and on- demand.

For more information, please visit: www.tenict.nl

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