Objective
Keep up with growing demand on IT
systems and increasing need for more
data storage
Approach
Find a reliable partner to provide
the right services, bring the right
knowledge, save costs and ensure a
flexible solution to meet future needs
Case Study
Flevoziekenhuis secures
storage headroom as
data continues to grow
HPE Flexible Capacity enables hospital
to add storage on pay-per-use basis
IT Matters
• Enables IT to keep pace with growing
demand on systems and data storage
without costly over provisioning
• Ensures reliable accessibility and rapid
availability of data
• Allows in-house IT to focus
capabilities on critical issues
and strategic initiatives
Business Matters
• Reduces cost of data storage,
with pay-per-use model freeing
capital budgets
• Ensures storage capacity grows
in line with hospital needs
• Simplifies planning around future data
requirements, securing optimal patient
care at all times, with means to monitor
all access routes
Flevoziekenhuis is a
typical modern hospital.
As it strives to deliver
more eective, more
sophisticated treatment
to patients, its data
requirement has grown
dramatically. HPE
Flexible Capacity creates
a pay-per-use model to
reduce cost and provide
the headroom to cope
with future growth.
Challenge
Keep up with increasing amount of data
Continuous growth has always been a key
challenge for Flevoziekenhuis, located at
the very heart of Almere, the Netherlands.
When the hospital opened its doors in 1991,
this city housed some 71000 people. Almere
itself had been established from scratch only
15 years earlier on the reclaimed land of
the Flevoland-polder. By 1991, the city was
set to grow very rapidly: in 1995, there were
already well over 100000 inhabitants and
today nearly 200000 people live in Almere.
As a result, Flevoziekenhuis started expansion
plans in 2006, tripling its size to 60000 sqm
by 2010. Today, Flevoziekenhuis employs
nearly 1600 people, managing 386
beds and taking care of almost 16000
patients annually.
Case study
Flevoziekenhuis
“The amount of data is growing by 10 or even 20% per year. This asks a lot
in terms of IT. If you don’t grow your IT operation fast enough, the hospital
will run into trouble. HPE Flexible Capacity allows me to accommodate
storage growth more flexibly and in line with the needs of the hospital.”
– Lex Pater, ICT manager, Flevoziekenhuis
Industry
Healthcare
Page 2
“The growth of the hospital is absolutely in
line with the growth of the city,” says Lex
Pater, ICT manager at the Flevoziekenhuis.
“The amount of data is growing by 10 or even
20% per year. This asks a lot in terms of IT. If
you don’t grow your IT operation fast enough,
the hospital will run into trouble.”
Both Lex Pater and Erik Bijleveld,
head of automation technology at the
Flevoziekenhuis, expect that the amount
of data at the hospital will continue to grow:
“We see increasing digitization in the hospital
in general. Additionally, medical equipment
such as CT scanners and MRI are becoming
much more accurate. That’s good news in
terms of patient care, but at the same time
it is also bringing in more data per image.
And as we treat more patients, we also collect
more information – adding even more data.”
Healthcare regulations in the Netherlands
require medical data to be stored for 15 years,
sometimes even longer. In addition, data
needs to remain accessible and be available
very quickly at all times, as patient information
has a vital role - literally - in clinical decision
making. At the same time, the hospital has the
goal to reduce annual operating costs of ICT.
Looking to the future, Bijleveld foresees
growing responsibilities for his ICT
department: “Security plays a very
important part in this, just as data storage
does. But how we release data is also
important. The biggest future challenges
for the hospital will be the increasing amount
of data and the amount of access routes and
solutions we provide externally.”
Solution
Pay-per-use storage
Pater: “When I started at the hospital just over
seven years ago, it became pretty clear to me
that a huge eort had to be made to catch
up in order to handle further growth. I also
decided not to solve this challenge internally,
but to find help from an outside party.”
Pater started looking for a partner to provide
the services he required: “I was not searching
for hardware or software. I needed to build a
reliable relationship with a partner that is able
to really help me. I found Hewlett Packard
Enterprise to be that partner.” Choosing
the pay-per-use principle, provided by HPE
Flexible Capacity, allows Pater to grow storage
capacity more flexibly and in line with the
needs of the hospital.
Case study
Flevoziekenhuis
Industry
Healthcare
Page 3
HPE Flexible Capacity is billed monthly as
a service for actual metered usage; it helps
to track costs and includes the infrastructure
and support needed. Pater says: “That
means you can eectively incorporate it
in your annual budget – instead of reacting
to peaks every three, four or five years.
It makes planning much easier and also
a lot more flexible.”
Introducing the flash drives increased
performance on the important parts, the
rest of the 3PAR tiers which replaced the
old solution resulted in an overall cost saving
of close to 30%. HPE 3PAR StoreServ data
storage systems modernise data centres to
instantly handle inconsistent workloads with
999999% data availability. It provides rapid
and automated provisioning, multi-tenant
design, hardware-accelerated deduplication
and sub-1ms latency – all within a single
tier-1 storage architecture.
“I did not even really notice that the migration
of our storage environment was happening.
After three weeks HPE just said it was done.
That is really great. And that’s also what I
expect in this long-term relationship:
new technology is introduced on time,”
explains Pater.
Bijleveld also mentions how HPE Datacenter
Care - Operational Support Services
(DC - OSS) unburdens his sta. HPE
Datacenter Care - OSS monitors and controls
the infrastructure, freeing Bijleveld and his
team up to focus on the hospital’s critical
issues and strategic initiatives. HPE also
oers a wide variety of IT services to
augment the organisation’s capabilities.
Bijleveld says: “HPE has the knowledge
and skills to deal with infrastructural issues
quickly and eectively. That enables us to
focus entirely on the day-to-day operations
here at the hospital.”
Benefit
Moving forward, into the future
The city of Almere is likely to continue to
grow, as the Dutch government and Almere
have agreed to add another 60000 houses
over the coming years as part of the ‘Almere
20’ masterplan. HPE Flexible Capacity
allows the Flevoziekenhuis to keep up
with this growth.
The capacity-based solution – which added
up to a yearly saving of current storage
exploitation costs of 30% to the hospital –
is also a good preparation for forthcoming
changes in the Dutch health system.
Case study
Flevoziekenhuis
Industry
Healthcare
Customer at a glance
Hardware
• HPE 3PAR StoreServ
HPE services
• HPE Flexible Capacity
• HPE Datacenter Care - Operational
Support Services
“HPE Flexible Capacity means I don’t have to worry
about Storage. Hewlett Packard Enterprise ensures
availability. That is very reassuring.”
– Lex Pater, ICT manager, Flevoziekenhuis
An evolution is underway to likely move
hospitals toward greater specialisation,
concentrating both medical expertise and
associated equipment for greater eiciency
and improved care. When the hospital has to
scale its operations to the changing needs
and demands, there are now only operational
cost involved - not capital IT equipment
investments - so they can better align costs
to the business as it changes.
Pater and Bijleveld are convinced they have
found the right partner and the right solution
to keep up with the increased demand on the
IT systems and the increasing demand for
more data storage. “The main added value
of HPE is in the knowledge that is provided
together with these solutions – knowledge
that I would otherwise have to acquire by
sending people on courses to keep up
with rapid changing technology.
“Also, the pay-per-use solution allows me not
to worry about storage, as HPE ensures that
there is always suicient capacity available.
That is very reassuring for me,” says Bijleveld.
For Pater, HPE Flexible Capacity means
he can indeed fulfil the storage needs of
the hospital in a very flexible and eicient
way and within budget restraints: “I have
confidence that I can handle demand,
year in and year out, without the need to
source capacity far in advance not knowing
when I will be needing it. I now have the
secure feeling that I can move forward,
into the future.”
Learn more at
hpe.com/flexible-capacity
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© Copyright 2016 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP. The information contained herein is subject to change without
notice. The only warranties for Hewlett Packard Enterprise products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements
accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.
4AA6-7757EEW, September 2016
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