The Problem

After Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Lahey Health merged to form Beth Israel Lahey Health, the organization undertook a project to consolidate all of its data centers, so as to create unity within the new system and ensure a flawless IT experience would lead to a flawless patient experience. When it came time to make a strategic decision on its IT footprint, BILH considered two options — a colocation facility or to make a serious investment into one (or two) of the on-premise data centers that had been in place and were now part of BILH portfolio of properties.

The Solution

After touring and meeting with colocation providers all over Massachusetts, BIHL quickly knew that Markley's One Summer Street facility — New England's largest and longest operating mission-critical data center and telecom hub — was the perfect place for BILH to usher in a new era of IT unification.

With a merger of two major healthcare providers already being so complicated, BILH needed a provider that could all but guarantee 100% uptime for the health system. Further, the move to Markley gave BILH back valuable estate assets that BILH could use to treat patients and do what it does best, help those who need it most.

Today Beth Israel Lahey Health houses nearly 90 cabinets worth of equipment in its own private colocation cage within the Markley facility. Not only is the BILH infrastructure backed by Markley's unique 2N infrastructure and scalable 5x redundant cooling system, but BILH has been able to take advantage of the ecosystem of network providers and public cloud on-ramps that Markley has to offer. For BILH, reliability and redundancy is key, and having a robust network means that BILH can improve the speed to connect to critical applications; in critical care quick access to information is everything. At Markley, BILH connects to not only six (6) different network providers natively, but also makes native connections to major public cloud providers.

Being in the Markley facility has given BILH staff expertise in building out a new footprint. Any time a company is merging two different unique data sets, there are going to be challenges. By utilizing Markley's 24x7x365 staff of qualified data center professionals to advise on case and cabling configuration, BILH was able to create a footprint that is designed to be scalable and resilient for many years to come.

Background

As one of the largest healthcare systems in the Northeastern United States, Beth Israel Lahey Health is dedicated to delivering exceptional care for every aspect of patient health. BILH provides everything from primary care to specialty care, from research labs to hospitals and well beyond. More than 1 million people rely on the care of BILH hospitals, primary care and specialty practices and behavioral and community health services and more. With all of those people relying on its services, BILH puts a premium on consistent and reliable technology to support its practices, understanding that any issue in the IT stack means that patients may not be getting the care they need.