"VMware is helping make our hospital more efficient and effective," said Meraz Nasir, manager of infrastructure at Interfaith Medical Center as Interfaith Medical Center announced their decision to deploy VMware Infrastructure 3 as the platform for the hospital's Microsoft Windows-based applications.

Nasir continues, "We've increased server utilization from eight percent to 70 percent. We expect to save over half a million dollars in two years with virtualization. That means we can focus more resources on delivering world-class healthcare."

Nasir concluded, "And all the improvements we've made in application availability and performance are helping our nurses and doctors spend more time attending to their patients rather than dealing with technical issues."

VMware announced that Interfaith Medical Center (IMC) has created a virtualized application environment with VMware Infrastructure 3 to ensure manageability, high availability and disaster recover for the hospital's Microsoft Windows-based applications.

Interfaith Medical Center began investigating virtualization when its server hardware requirements reached unsustainable levels. IMC faced power, space and budget constraints and needed a strategic IT solution. After considering offerings from VMware, Microsoft and Citrix, IMC selected VMware Infrastructure. The hospital is now running nearly all of its critical applications in VMware virtual machines and has implemented a strict VMware-first policy for all new applications.

“We looked at several virtualization options and it was clear that VMware was the best fit for our hospital,” said Meraz Nasir, manager of infrastructure at Interfaith Medical Center. “VMware offered the most robust solution. Capabilities like VMotion and Storage VMotion have been invaluable. We have experienced zero downtime since going virtual. Application performance has never been better. We’re even developing an in-house disaster recovery plan. That wasn’t possible in the past due to cost and technical limitations. Ultimately, when we considered all aspects of virtualization, it wasn’t even close. VMware was the smart choice.”

IMC has achieved consolidation ratios as high as 17:1 on its physical hosts and has virtualized approximately 95 percent of its Microsoft Windows-based applications. These applications include IMC’s core Meditech health information system that is the foundation for patient care and billing, BlackBerry Enterprise Server, Microsoft SharePoint, Kronos software for timekeeping and scheduling, and Lawson software for finance and accounting. IMC is also running sophisticated medical software on the VMware platform, including glucometer software to help treat diabetes patients, and endoPRO for gastrointestinal screenings.

Nasir cited a number of specific instances in which VMware technology has made a significant difference in hospital operations. One example was a recent storage area network (SAN) upgrade. The hospital used VMware’s Storage VMotion capability to migrate two terabytes of data in real time to a new SAN environment. There was no interruption in data availability. Without Storage VMotion, Nasir estimates a full migration would have taken two days and required the expertise of expensive outside consultants.