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 the BILH portfolio of properties.

Upgrading one of its current data centers would mean a serious investment in equipment such as UPS systems, generators and HVAC systems. These systems were familiar to BILH as all are critical to maintaining 24x7 operations of hospitals. However, making an investment in this equipment for data centers would essentially double BILH's capital costs in equipment and take away valuable real-estate that could be used for patient care and research.

The right decision quickly became clear. BILH is in the business of providing world class patient care, not maintaining data center footprints.

The Solution

After touring and meeting with colocation providers all over New England, BILH 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 valuable real-estate assets that BILH could use to treat patients and do what it does best, help those who need it most.

Today BILH 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 are 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 cage and cabling configuration, BILH was able to create a footprint that is designed to be scalable and resilient for many years to come.

The Results

With its data centers consolidated into the Markley facility, BILH has been able to create a reliant, redundant and world class space to house its mission-critical infrastructure, at a fraction of the price of rehabbing any of its on-premise data centers. BILH can focus on bringing quality care to its patients while Markley takes away the burden of making sure its infrastructure never fails. BILH recently went live in the Markley facility, and has seen no downtime or data center performance issues of any kind. Prior to the merger, Lahey health had a smaller footprint in Markley, and experienced no issues or disruptions to service dating back to moving into the facility in 2015.

Conclusion

Beth Israel Lahey Health has been able to build a robust, scalable and, most importantly, reliable mission-critical data center footprint that ensures its patients will always receive the best care possible.