Cisco Unified Computing System
Case Study
Kalispell Regional Medical Center Leads Way
with First Deployment of Cisco UCS to Manage
MEDITECH Electronic Medical Records System
Path-breaking implementation on track to become model for entire country
HIGHLIGHTS
CUSTOMER PROFILE
• Client Name: Kalispell Regional
Medical Center
• Region: Northwestern Montana
• Industry: Health Care
BUSINESS GOALS
• Consolidate its computing network
and storage access into a
comprehensive system
• Improve patient tracking, treatments,
and outcomes
• Increase uptime and lower costs
• Update clinical software processing
capability to boost system responsiveness to physicians and clinicians
SOLUTION
• Cisco Unified Computing System
• VMware VSphere
• Cisco Nexus 7000 Series switches
• Cisco IronPort
RESULTS
• Greatly increased system access
performance and reduced
processing time
• Ensured uninterrupted uptime for
electronic medical record system
• Substantially improved the overall
performance of the network
• Improved server scalability to keep
pace with growing demand
• Solved space, storage and
expenditure issues by eliminating the
need to continually add more servers
• Lowered total cost of ownership by
simplifying port infrastructure
1 © 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Business Challenge
Kalispell is the largest city and commercial center in
northwestern Montana near Glacier National Park. For the
91,000 residents of the Flathead County, Kalispell Regional
Medical Center (KRMC) stands for combining community
service with the highest quality of care. Each year, KRMC
provides millions of dollars of charity care and community
programs to local residents and makes up for tens of
thousands of dollars a year in reimbursement shortfalls.
To sustain its good works — and fulfill its motto of “Exceptional
Technology, Compassionate Care” — KRMC is continually
looking for ways to lower costs and improve its delivery of care.
In 2010, it began reexamining the underlying IT architecture
of its electronic medical records system, which employs
MEDITECH’s software solution.
KRMC’s assessment revealed the growing limitations and inefficiencies of its legacy IT environment.
These included:
• Limited data processing capacity
• Sprawling data center footprint
• Poor coordination among servers
• Costly cycles of spending on new servers
• Bottlenecks created by slow application performance
To remedy these inefficiencies and build a sustainable IT environment, KRMC’s IT leaders realized the medical
center needed to consolidate and standardize its IT environment. By reducing system variations and complexities — and minimizing “version control” between servers — KRMC could prevent system downtime, accelerate data
recovery when necessary, and streamline server setup and upgrades. The move would both keep costs under
control and ensure uninterrupted access to vital medical records. “We were in a situation where we were running
out of capacity — demand was exceeding supply,” says David Pape, Interim Director of IT at KRMC. “We were long
overdue for a technology refresh with an organized approach to our data center solution.”
Solution and Outcomes
Recognizing the advantages of a unified IT infrastructure for its MEDITECH software solution, KRMC decided to
simultaneously update and move the solution from an outmoded, disjointed patchwork of legacy servers to Cisco
Unified Computing System (UCS). Cisco UCS is designed as a single virtual blade chassis that incorporates and
scales across multiple blade chassis, rack-mount servers, and racks. The result is a self-integrating, self-aware
system.
Cisco UCS is the industry’s first converged data center platform utilizing VMware virtualization technology
deployment — and KRMC the first major U.S. health care provider to adopt this integrated, next-generation platform
for managing medical records. IT leaders at KRMC say that its path-breaking implementation could serve as a
model for the entire country.
Improved Uptime for Providers
Clearly the biggest beneficiaries of the new system are the health care providers who rely on it for medical and
patient information. Because UCS simplifies application management and scales more easily, problems related to
scheduled maintenance downtime, episodic slow performance due to a lack of interconnectedness, and conflicts
over version control between servers were all but eliminated. “Ensuring uptime is of enormous value to our caregivers,”
Pape says. “We have to be connected all the time to fully serve our physicians, clinicians, and patients.”
Greater IT Capacity
The converged, virtualized UCS platform has proven to be a major boon to KRMC’s IT department, which was
under constant pressure to supply more server hardware and CPU capacity — pressures that were intensified by
a lack of space, money, and personnel. “We had huge data center capacity issues,” Pape admits. “We were
rapidly counting down the days to maximum capacity.”
“We basically consolidated three different environments and architectures on a
single-host environment. We are building a much more reliable platform and
environment, one that is much easier to manage with Cisco UCS.”
— David Pape, Interim Director of IT, Kalispell Regional Medical Center
2 © 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Instead of continually adding physical servers, Cisco UCS consolidated and virtualized the existing infrastructure,
saving space and lowering total cost of ownership. “We are looking at a significant reduction with UCS,” Pape
says. “Blade architecture significantly reduces space requirements,” adding that he is averaging 20 virtual servers
on a blade.
Streamlined Hardware Footprint
Since the move to Cisco UCS, KRMC’s IT department has seen a reduction in power usage and a 66% drop in
the amount of space needed to house servers. “We are seeing a four- or five-to-one reduction in racks,” Pape
says. As KRMC continue to leverage virtualization technology to shrink its hardware footprint, the IT department
is expecting to cut its energy consumption further, which will qualify it for cash incentives from the local utility
company. Managers say that incentives of more than $200K are available from utilities as part of programs that
encourage businesses to develop innovative ways to reduce energy consumption.
“Utility companies are similarly reaching maximum capacity. They all have programs incentivizing organizations to
take a hard look at their infrastructure and develop ways to reduce consumption into the future. The Cisco UCS
platform is a fantastic tool for achieving those goals,” Pape says.
Faster Deployments, Better Performance
The efficient UCS-based data center allows KRMC to create server profiles that help administrators deploy and
provision new blade servers in a fraction of the time — from 3 weeks to 1 hour on average.
The move also has significantly boosted data-processing performance, with IT managers noting a 2-8 times
increase in system speed after the UCS deployment. That has led to faster delivery of information and reports.
For example, one set of reports that used to take all night to run can now be delivered in less than an hour.
“I received a call from the lab manager who was ecstatic the day following deployment when she realized her
processing time was reduced five-fold,” Pape says.
More Efficient Disaster Recovery
The IT department also saw huge efficiency gains in its disaster recovery operations. “We basically consolidated
three different environments and architectures on a single-host environment,” Pape says. “We are building a
much more reliable platform and environment, one that is much easier to manage with UCS.”
Boost in Application Performance
IT managers have reported substantially better performance of its MEDITECH application since migrating to the
unified computing platform. A key data-archiving procedure for admissions information, for example, now takes
about an hour to run compared to 4-5 hours in the old environment; and a monthly billing and receivables reporting
process that used to take more than 8 hours has been reduced to about 5.5 hours.
Better performance also means that ongoing background jobs are less likely to trigger alerts. “Several background
jobs in MEDITECH used to alert us every night because they ran long enough to hit a threshold,” an IT manager
reported. “Now they don’t.”
3 © 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
“Our goal is to always be ahead of demand or at least six months in front of the
organization. Cisco UCS allows us to reach that goal.”
— David Pape, Interim Director of IT, Kalispell Regional Medical Center
Getting Ahead of Demand
Overall, adopting Cisco UCS supports KRMC’s goal of moving to a hyper-visor based virtualized IT model that
leverages products such as VMware. With the UCS implementation, KRMC’s expects to virtualize 90% of its
infrastructure within a year.
The result is that for the first time, KRMC’s IT department can easily meet demand for server capacity and create
a cushion to accommodate future growth. “Our goal is to always be ahead of demand or at least six months in
front of the organization. Cisco UCS allows us to reach that goal,” Pape says.
National Showcase
Getting ahead of demand — indeed, getting ahead in general — remains the overall objective for the entire medical
center, from the IT department outward. “There are dynamic changes in healthcare all the time,” Pape acknowledges.
“IT needs to keep up and be the enabler for change. My inherent goal is to improve the delivery of patient care
while driving the bottom line through technology.”
With its stated mission of “Exceptional Technology,” Kalispell is an ideal place for a forward-looking project like
running its MEDITECH software solution on Cisco UCS. As the U.S. moves toward mandatory electronic records
access for all patients, and hospitals struggle to find ways to deliver care on leaner budgets, Kalispell’s innovative
system could provide a blueprint for the nation — as well as greater service to the community.
“We are always focused on delivering better care and achieving a higher level of patient outcomes,” Pape says.
“All our technology should be in the service of improving efficiencies and demonstrating value for patients and
providers. Moving to Cisco UCS allows us to anticipate six months ahead of the organization and have enough
computing on hand to support almost anything coming down the road.”
For More Information
Visit our sites to learn more about Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) and its industry awards.
Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS):
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10265/index.html
Industry awards:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/ps10265/industry_benchmarks.html#~industry_recognition
Cisco and the Cisco Logo are trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco’s trademarks can be found
at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a
partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company.