Nortel, EMC Deliver Optical SAN for Healthcare Provider

Nortel and EMC have joined forces to provide an end-to-end solution based on an optical storage area network (SAN) and business continuity software for Baptist Health, a Montgomery, Alabama-based healthcare institution that offers quality, leading-edge health services and wellness programs.

“Part of delivering exceptional service to all of our communities is ensuring we have leading-edge technology in place to implement a resilient, scalable, business continuity solution,” said Tom Bradley, interim chief information officer, Baptist Health. “Working with Nortel Networks and EMC, industry leaders in optical networking and networked storage, we’re confident that our medical and administrative personnel will have rapid access to vital patient data for exceptional customer service.”

Prior to implementing an optical SAN, Baptist Health used multiple T-1 lines between its data centers, making it difficult to scale and support complete data replication and business continuity. With advanced technology from Nortel Networks and EMC, Baptist Health now has a more robust business continuity solution and can automate the process of rapid and reliable backup and disaster recovery.

“This optical SAN solution enables us to restart servers rapidly — almost instantaneously — before any mission-critical data is lost,” Bradley said. “Our ability to quickly retrieve data in the event of a disaster is critical to our reputation for offering quality healthcare and ensuring patient safety.”

In order to better support the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Baptist Health’s new solution includes two highly available and reliable EMC Symmetrix networked storage systems, each separately located in the organization’s two data centers, as well as EMC TimeFinder and SRDF (Symmetrix Remote Data Facility) software for business continuity. Tying it together is a high performance, scalable, DWDM-based Nortel Networks OPTera Metro 5200 Multiservice Platform.

This article originally appeared on Enterprise Storage Forum.