A Guide for Healthcare Leaders

You know why your organization needs a virtualized network. You know you won’t be able to deliver, improve, or fix experiences rapidly enough to keep up with t

Nearly all healthcare organizations are rapidly moving to modernize all aspects of their IT framework. Infrastructure, applications, processes, resource rationalization, data centers— along with the essential role that IT plays in organizational success—all are undergoing massive changes, upgrades and updates.

But no healthcare payor or provider wants to endure the economic and operational impact of perpetual change in order to achieve a truly modern IT platform and architecture. Senior IT and organizational leadership are deeply committed to using IT in new, innovative and game-changing ways, and that can’t be done effectively or efficiently without a plan to future-proof the IT infrastructure. Initiatives such as digital transformation, machine learning, virtualization, cloud computing, big data analytics, edge computing and connected devices are just hopes and dreams without a future-proofing strategy.

There are several reasons for this. First, few organizations want—or can afford—to devote more budget expenditures every time a new technology refresh cycle comes around for servers, storage or networking. Second, organizations want to deploy their talented people on transformational applications that have tangible value, not just supporting functions that merely keep the lights on such as patching software, ensuring proper infrastructure configuration and manually tuning servers and storage for optimal performance. And third, IT now is widely acknowledged as a strategic asset for an enriched payor or provider experience and enhanced employee productivity—but that can’t be done without a consistent, unified, agile framework that doesn’t have to be overhauled frequently.

Fortunately, most senior leaders have begun recognizing that requirement, and many are embracing the notion of a future-proofed infrastructure, because they know that strategic programs such as hybrid cloud and modern applications demand it. The right future- proofing strategy breaks down IT silos, improves IT responsiveness to healthcare needs, stretches valuable budget dollars, facilitates new initiatives and embeds higher and deeper levels of intelligence into all decision-making. That’s where capabilities delivered by hybrid cloud and modern applications, in particular, become invaluable.

But, although many healthcare institutions now grasp the need for a future-proofed infrastructure for hybrid cloud and modern applications, not everyone yet understands how to get that done. This guide not only looks at the rapidly changing issues that are making infrastructure modernization challenging, but also examines some practical things senior decision-makers can and should do today and in the near future in order to make it happen—in particular, hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI).

Jens Koegler

Jens Koegler is VMware's Healthcare Industry Director in EMEA. He is helping our healthcare customers develop and run modern applications to drive innovation and ensure better patient care through a digital foundation that includes data center, hybrid cloud, mobile, networking and security technologies. VMware plays a strategic role in the healthcare industry. Its leading innovations in enterprise software help ensure consistent patient care and reduce IT access time for healthcare professionals so they can spend more time with their patients. Jens plays a key role in helping customers understand how new applications, devices, the latest IT technologies and digital transformation are driving innovation in healthcare.