IBM Planning and Design Services for Data Center, Keep WakeMed Operations Running Smoothly

IBM Planning and Design Services for Data Center, Keep WakeMed Operations Running Smoothly

WakeMed Health & Hospitals selected IBM (NYSE: IBM) to help plan and design the move of its data center as part of a multi-million dollar commitment to information technology to support patient care and hospital operations. WakeMed’s data center contains the health care information for more than 500,000 patients who are treated within the hospital system annually. The data center has grown significantly and currently houses more than 56 terabytes of data, including everything from medical records to billing information to critical heart labs and images — that’s twice the amount of text housed by the U.S. Library of Congress.

“With this kind of move, you only have one chance to get it right,” said Denton Arledge, Vice President of Information Services, WakeMed. “This data center supports every facet of the hospital system — from patient care to operations to finance — and it had to stay up and running while we moved the equipment to a new, secure location miles away from our main campus.”

IBM’s Site and Facilities Services consultants teamed with WakeMed’s technical staff to plan the move, which included millions of dollars worth of equipment and hundreds of miles of cable that support WakeMed’s 11 different sites in Wake County. IBM also worked with WakeMed to ensure design of the new data center would meet the health system’s future needs. “In this type of situation, nothing beats experience,” said Ric Anderson, IBM Project Manager. “I’ve worked on numerous data center moves for our clients and that experience really pays off when you’re working on an intricate project like this one.”

Read the complete Press Release