Information Technology Navigator

Healthcare providers today are continuing to rely more and more on the efficiencies of the public cloud to store, send, and manage sensitive data. But it’s challenging to leverage the benefits of the cloud while managing the increasing complexity of healthcare security, compliance and regulatory demands.

That’s where HITRUST comes in. The HITRUST Certification is the most widely recognized security accreditation in the healthcare industry.  HITRUST incorporates healthcare specific security, privacy and regulatory requirements from existing regulations such as HIPAA/HITECH, PCI, ISO 27001 and MARS-E as well as industry best practices. Microsoft has recently announced that Azure is one of the first hyperscale cloud computing platforms to become HITRUST CSF Certified.  It’s a valuable addition to Azure, providing a single framework for healthcare organizations to leverage the efficiencies, availability, and scalability that Azure provides.

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In December 2015, the electronic discovery provisions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) were amended to substantially expand the Safe Harbor against sanctions for destruction of electronic data. In my November 2015 white paper, C-Level Guide to Covering Your Information Governance Assets, I predicted that the amended rules signaled a pivot away from one of the main sources of eDiscovery uncertainty - the inconsistent imposition of severe sanctions for the loss of electronically stored information relevant to dispute resolution. The prediction holds.

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To date, we’ve looked at making a compelling financial case for an investment in software and making the business case for a new disk array. In this last blog, I’ll talk about making an increasingly frequent IT decision, seeking the expertise of an IT Managed Service Provider.

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In my last post, "Making the Business Case for a New Disk Array," I talked about using TCO and ROI to make a decision on whether to replace or upgrade an aging disk array. Now, we’ll look at how to cost justify a new software investment.

Example:

• The Situation: A business is contemplating investing in a software management tool which will allow them to have a better understanding of their application workloads, infrastructure utilization and know where and when bottlenecks exist within the infrastructure.

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Now that we’ve talked about how how to make IT Investments for the future and how TCO and ROI differ, let’s look at a few examples and see where TCO and ROI analysis might come into play for a business.

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Today’s CIOs take an active role in helping the business be more competitive, drive revenue and innovate. When new IT investments are needed to support the business, a cost justification, either in the form of TCO or ROI is required. When should you make the case for each? When do you need both?

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Today more than ever businesses are being challenged to make sound, financially prudent investments in their IT infrastructure. CIOs are under pressure to contain spending while at the same time deliver the IT services needed to support the business’ increasing desire for applications that are more agile, perform better and are available 24x7.

It is in this context that IT decision makers must decide what infrastructure (servers, storage, networks, software) will be used to support the business’ applications. And this is not a one-shot deal.

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At Daymark, we practice what we preach. If it’s not good enough for us, it’s not good enough for our customers either! One example: Microsoft Azure. Long before we achieved Elite Microsoft partner status, we had moved our own network onto Azure, and now have over three years of experience running our environment in the cloud. Here are some of the lessons we’ve learned and best practices we implement when helping clients migrate to Azure.

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Cloud technologies started becoming relevant about ten years ago, and now more and more businesses have been moving their IT environments from on-prem hardware to the cloud. With many organizations adopting a “cloud first” strategy, it is clear that we are heading into a time where it will be the norm for companies to have the majority of their IT environment in the cloud instead of on-prem.

This thought reminded me of a Winston Churchill quote, in which he said, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” When Churchill said this, he was referring to World War 2, but this quote also applies to how this is the end of the beginning of the adoption of cloud technologies. Sooner rather than later, all companies’ IT environments will have some sort of integration with cloud technologies, whether their entire environment is moved to the cloud, or they run a hybrid environment.

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In “Part 1” and “Part 2” of this blog series on Microsoft Azure, I’ve covered frequently asked questions on security, migration best practices and how to get started with a pilot. Here, in this third and final installment, I share common questions on predicting costs, deployment “gotchas” and competitive offerings.

Q. How can I estimate my monthly/yearly Azure costs?

A. Azure has a pricing calculator service which allows you to add any product that you envision your cloud having, and then it will estimate your costs for you. You can see and try the calculator out for yourself by clicking here.

Q. What are the unexpected “gotchas” in a typical Azure deployment?

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