Data Center Lessons for NY City Health and Hospitals Corp.

The gigantic New York Health and Hospitals Corp. is a vast healthcare system of about $6.7 billion that connects 11 hospitals and nursing homes, 80 city clinics and treatment centers around the metropolitan area. When the New York hospitals embarked on a 5-year $824 million capital investment plan, the spotlight was on its data centers. Rather than renovating the 11 data centers with a huge capital investment, what NYC HHC decided to do was to consolidate their data centers.

According to the assistant VP of infrastructure services for NYC HHC, Corey Cush – “We have been able to save on power, we have been able to save on maintenance, and we have been able to save on the recurring cost of adding additional servers as we continue to expand our application and service portfolio”. Over 5 years, 1700 physical servers in the healthcare data centers were reduced by 63%, the required staff numbers lowered, with a total savings around $70 million.

What can businesses learn from NYC HHC?

Save More from Server Virtualization

Cush said, “The faster that you can virtualize, the more immediately you can realize the savings. When I go to do the budget next year, I don’t have to pay for 800 or more servers.”

Upgrading the 11 data centers with 100s of servers each year was too laborious for NYC HHC. Over $8 million was saved from virtualization of its servers and reduction of data center numbers.

Green Data Center with Consolidation Efforts

Coming down to just 2 data centers from the actual 11 data centers slashed down the space requirement from 21,000 square feet to about 7000 square feet. This allowed the company to focus and spend on green and efficient technologies like better cooling systems, efficient power sources, and heat exchange facilities.

Standardization

Greater efficiency was acquired by enforcing better standardization during data center consolidation that enabled improved security, reduced complexity and smoother disaster recoveries.

Combined Help Desk Efficiency

15 disparate help desks were combined into a single integrated support facility with the same ticketing systems and monitoring tools, as a part of the consolidation effort. This brought an annual savings of over $1 million, an increase from 18,000 calls/ month to 35,000calls/ month and efficient 24-hours support service.

NYC HHC witnesses huge efficiencies with lesser resources. How can you improve your efficiency with data centers?

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.