The proliferation of new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices place a considerable amount of demand on healthcare organizations’ networks. Similarly, the opening of new data centers, offices and labs adds to the demand on networks, simultaneously complicating the responsibilities of undersized network administration teams.
These significant trends in legacy networking tools and shorthanded teams can compromise a healthcare organization’s ability to manage network infrastructure, creating inefficiencies, extra costs and—in worst-case scenarios—outages. Thankfully, a recent network refresh project from a leading health insurance carrier shows what is necessary to overcome this dilemma.
Case in Point: Health Insurance Carrier
For over 70 years, a leading health insurance carrier, an independent licensee of a major US-based federation, provided health coverage to more than 21.5 million members. As the health insurance carrier continued to expand its network, setting up new data centers and network devices, its network operations team quickly realized that their legacy out of band network solution was not suitable for this increased level of complexity and scale.
In addition to being inefficient, the legacy out of band network solution was not user friendly. This lack of usability proves especially concerning for a 60-person team stretched across locations. Both the data center administration team, which only had a few members, and the network operations team (also limited) knew they needed a reliable solution to help deploy equipment and troubleshoot issues in the event of a disruption.
As such, the network administration team undertook a network refresh project. The primary focus of this project was to replace their existing out of band solution with a better one to compensate for the greater demand on the network and to increase their own efficiency.
The Benefits of Upgrading Legacy Out of Band Solutions
The health insurance carrier’s network administration team would adopt a network resilience platform from a leading provider of secure out of band management solution. This platform uses a software solution that enables centralized provisioning, monitoring and is scalable. This software solution also served as a single point of reference and control for all the health insurance carrier’s data centers, campuses, branches and edge locations.
The network resilience platform and supportive software eliminated manual processes bogging down the network administration team, empowering them to accomplish more with less staff. One manual process these technologies helped streamline was upgrading switches, firewall software and other core equipment that needed a new feature or upgrade or had come to the end of their life cycle. Rather than traveling on-site to perform updates, the network resilience platform gave the team remote access and control of these network devices. For a team of limited staff, the ability to upgrade these switches remotely was essential—one network engineer noted that this enhancement saved hours of labor for an equivalent cost savings of approximately $60 to $75K per year
In addition to enabling remote configurations, which expedited the deployment of new devices or upgrades (accelerating time to value for the investment), the network resilience platform and supportive software bolstered network resilience. Recall that new technologies and locations strain networks, and unexpected outages can occur. Thankfully, with the network resilience platform, the network administration team will always have a way to access and troubleshoot their critical devices, even if the production network becomes disrupted. Greater network resilience ensures operational continuity and maximal productivity for the entire organization.
The Hallmark of a Great Solution is the Provider
Modern networking solutions and resilience platforms will not only support business innovation but also optimize operations for understaffed teams. Nevertheless, despite the many network solutions available today, provider quality varies. For businesses, the hallmark of an ideal provider is one with a track record of delivering successful solutions in the same or comparable industry as themselves. In the case of the health insurance carrier, it partnered with a leading provider of secure out of band management solutions that possessed experience resolving similar issues in the healthcare sector.
Ismet Pekin
Ismet Pekin is Sr. Product Marketing Manager for Opengear.
