Parnassia Bavo Groep case study

The overview

The Hague-based Parnassia Bavo Groep is one of EvoSwitch's largest customers in the healthcare sector. The organization was formed in recent years from a series of mergers which have led to the creation of a large mental healthcare organization.

The Parnassia Bavo Groep previously operated two mini datacenter centers of its own, but following problems with the power supply and the desired flexibility with regards to housing it was decided to outsource these activities to EvoSwitch.

The organization

Parnassia Bavo Groep is a modern mental healthcare organization in the Netherlands, consisting of 8 subsidiaries and more than 8000 employees operating 24/7 year in year out.

In recent years the Netherlands has had to deal with an ever increasing need for specialized mental healthcare and addiction treatment. The progressive Parnassia Bavo Groep is seeking to spearhead these developments, especially when it comes to delivering quality.

Parnassia Bavo Groep achieves this by:
• Solving their client’s mental problems in a purposeful and effective manner through well-defined specializations and top clinical care.
• Making use of their broad knowledge and know-how within the health care industry.
• Tending to the well-being of clients through a wide range of specialist services that synergize with each other.
• Doing scientific research. Parnassia Bavo Groep currently has ten full professors and numerous employees who conduct PhD researches each year.

Proper healthcare can only be achieved by conducting professional business management. Parnassia Bavo Groep is mindful in their use of assets, directing as many resources as possible to actual healthcare.

Requirements

The healthcare sector is coping with a rapid growth in data intensity and growing budget cuts. The introduction of electronic patient records and the use of fully-fledged back-office systems, digital scans and video-conferencing are making high demands on storage capacity and bandwidth.

“The amount of data is increasing at an enormous rate”, comments Adrie Rolloos, senior ICT adviser with Parnassia Bavo Groep. “We administer about 145,000 current patient files, all of which have been digitized since 2003. Additionally, we work with SAP and the volume of emails that flow though the organization is huge.”

With the growing budget cuts and public profile it was imperative that Parnassia Bavo Groep had the flexibility in paying for their power. Another critical requirement was the uptime of personal details and medical files. Ensuring the availability of the correct information under all circumstances can literally be a matter of life or death.

The solution

Using a server-based computing solution, all data and applications are now housed at EvoSwitch datacenter. There are 160 Citrix servers and 150 virtual servers operating around the clock. The amount of servers used naturally creates high demands on power supply and cooling. Thankfully, the state-of-the-art facilities of EvoSwitch guarantee not only enormous bandwidth, but also minimal energy costs, sustainability and 24x7 technical support. For example, the 1.2 PUE already lowered energy costs, but EvoSwitch’s cost model only requires its clients to pay 50% of their energy costs upfront. Adrie comments:

“EvoSwitch offers a cost-effective solution to our needs. I must confess that sustainability is not the most important argument as far as we are concerned, but it was nonetheless a big plus, particularly bearing in mind the emphasis we place on sustainability as a healthcare institution.”

Outsourcing their IT infrastructure was not only cost-effective for Parnassia Bavo Groep, it also offered the best guarantee for optimal availability. EvoSwitch employs the “Twin” concept, which means that the entire infrastructure is duplicated and spread over two halls. EvoSwitch datacenter is also built with full redundancy in mind; both in terms of power supply as well as connectivity, because EvoSwitch renders services to large providers.

“The availability of the data was of crucial importance in our decision to team up with EvoSwitch. It is the only datacenter that allowed us to realize our functional concept,” concludes Adrie.