Healthscope select Logicalis for WAN Acceleration
solution
Healthscope is a leading
private health care provider within Australia that uniquely
operates in every State and Territory, as well as in Asia.
Healthscope is the second largest private hospital provider in
Australia, operating 43 private hospitals around the country. The
company includes a pathology business with facilities in Australia,
New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia, a growing medical centre
division with over 45 clinics and a diagnostic imaging division
based in major.
Challenge
To meet the growing needs of its hospitals and pathology labs,
Healthscope needed a solution that made more efficient use of
bandwidth and allowed it to send larger applications to remote
sites. With only small internet links available to remote sites,
applications were prohibitively slow, impeding business performance
and delaying patient turnaround time.
Healthscope needed to improve its connection speeds, which were
often running at dial-up speeds of 256kb or 512kb and needed to
improve the compression technology used to send more complex
applications to remote sites. Healthscope needed a product with
high-performance capabilities that would improve performance
without losing any of the integrity of the connection.
Solution
In November 2008 Logicalis won the opportunity to conduct a
trial of the Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) solution –
a comprehensive WAN optimisation solution that accelerates
application delivery over the network. The trial was conducted
during a period of two months and measured the performance of the
Cisco WAAS 4.1 solution to four remote sites, two hospitals and two
pathology labs. Results were then compared to the incumbent
technology provided by Riverbed Technology.
The trial proved that the Cisco WAAS solution implemented by
Logicalis could deliver results four times faster than the
incumbent. Logicalis was awarded the contract to design, implement
and manage the initial roll-out of the WAN optimisation project as
well as manage the ongoing maintenance and technical support for
Healthscope.
The project is being conducted in two phases, with the initial
roll out to 59 sites Australia-wide commencing in June 2009. The
initial phase covers the 43 pathology labs and 16 of the most
critical private hospitals, which were chosen based on their remote
location and current performance capabilities.
WAAS 4.1 has been installed on existing Cisco routers and
replaces the additional hardware required by the Riverbed
Technology solution. By consolidating the hardware required at each
site, Healthscope gains greater cost efficiencies and reduces its
overall maintenance costs.
The second phase of the roll out will be completed by June 2010
and will cover the remaining 26 hospitals in the Healthscope
network.
Benefits
“Logicalis has improved performance to Healthscope’s remote
sites, with speeds increasing by up to 1MB or 2MB (depending on the
application) and we are thrilled with these results. Logicalis
minimised the impact on our sites during the changeover and managed
the whole process effortlessly. We have been very impressed with
their capabilities.
“The Cisco WAAS solution has been installed on our existing
routers, meaning we have a cleaner technology solution at each
site, with only one box required to do the work of two. This will
help us lower our maintenance costs and ongoing technology costs
significantly.”