| | Bure Healthcare heals network with WhatsUp Gold
IT systems are often referred to as "mission critical." This description is never more appropriate than in the healthcare IT sector. In Sweden, one of the foremost IT solution s providers to hospitals and the healthcare sector recently adopted WhatsUp Gold from Ipswitch as their network monitoring system of choice, a decision based in part on two positive word-of-mouth recommendations.
In Sweden, the most well-known private healthcare company is Bure. A major part of its IT systems are provided by a company in the Bure group known as Udac. Udac is the company within the group that supplies most of the IT solutions for the healthcare part. Its annual turnover is US $12,000,000, with an ambition to double that in two years. It employs 135 staff spread across six sites in Sweden. These are in Stockholm, Uppsala, Link ping, Malm , Lund, and Lule . Although its main focus is IT solutions for healthcare, with major implementations at several hospitals in Sweden, it also supplies network and computer solutions for all types of companies.
Naturally all healthcare systems need to be up and running 24 hours per day, seven days per week. Any weak links in a network may have implications for others. "At the heart of Udac s network and any of those we install is a monitoring system that has to be completely reliable. When choosing software to do this, Nyberg drew on experience of both large scale and bespoke systems. My colleagues and I have used Computer Associates system for a year, when we all worked for another company, and Udac has used a couple of home-made network monitoring systems before now," said Roland Nyberg, head of Udac s Stockholm office.
The evaluation process covered systems from many different vendors but word-of-mouth recommendation also played a serious part. Nyberg added, "During the evaluation we also spoke to two banks in Stockholm, who had very good experiences with WhatsUp Gold. They had been using it for almost three years as their only network monitoring system."
The price/performance leader in low-cost network monitoring, WhatsUp Gold is a versatile first alert tool. Known for the speed of its notifications when a critical device or service goes down, WhatsUp Gold complements larger enterprise system management platforms from vendors such as Hewlett Packard, Tivoli Systems, and Computer Associates. It is also highly regarded as a cost-effective, stand-alone monitoring system, particularly among organizations that need immediate notification when a mission-critical device or system service fails.
Having chosen Ipswitch s software, Udac remain impressed. "We really like the product," says Nyberg. "It s simplicity, together with really good reports, and a very competitive price are all strong points. Having used WhatsUp Gold for two months now, we now feel very confident to sell it to our specialized customers." Especially useful in healthcare installations will be WhatsUp Gold s remote notification capabilities, which can send system alerts to beepers, pagers, or e-mail addresses.
Udac s first external order was to set up a network monitoring system for Stockholm South Healthcare, with 150 network devices and servers. They monitor hubs, routers, switches, Wan-links, internet access, servers, databases including MS-SQL, IBM-DB2 and Amtrix, services from external servers, CPU and disk utilization The number of PCs exceed 1,500. Udac created a complete system with advanced pooling, notification, and a report package with availability related to SLA.
"The rise of 24-hour dependence on IT networks critical services especially in the healthcare sector - has created a need for near-perfect uptime, so more and more organizations are demanding greater accountability from their IT departments," comments Roger C. Greene, president of Ipswitch, Inc. "A hospital will need to know as soon as a problem occurs, and that s where a highly effective solution like WhatsUp Gold becomes invaluable. With its immediate notification and new reporting features, we have always developed WhatsUp Gold as a tool that can provide comprehensive functionality at an attractive price."
Now that Udac has chosen WhatsUp Gold as their network monitoring system of choice, they are beginning to recommend this to customer sites, and including it in their IT solutions they specify. "I presented a demo for all in Udac who could be interested and I got a very positive response," concluded Nyberg. "The reaction was that it is a very good product, that could be implemented for many of our customers."
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