Busamed, a prominent South African private hospital group, has successfully integrated its seven on-premise data centers into a single, centrally hosted private cloud environment, resulting in significant power consumption savings covering around 80% of the project costs.
According to Servesan Moodley, Group IT Manager at Busamed, the business, which was created in 2015, is focused on providing high-quality patient care. Founded in the Western Cape, Busamed developed through four greenfield projects and the acquisition of three existing hospitals, resulting in a 1,110-bed healthcare group with facilities in the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, and the Free State.
Previously, Busamed had issues with its data center setup as a result of acquisitions bringing a variety of technologies. This resulted in many tiny data centers with duplicate tasks and a complex cybersecurity configuration. Load shedding and technological upgrades also caused problems.
To address these concerns and ensure the round-the-clock availability of business systems essential to patient care, we decided to move to a hosted private cloud. Due to Datacentrix’s in-depth knowledge of Busamed’s current and future business requirements, the company teamed with them after evaluating both private and public cloud choices.
Datacentrix‘s analysis of power consumption across seven data centers revealed that a hosted cloud model could cover 46% of the project cost with normal Eskom electricity usage, resulting in up to 92% savings on a stage six loadshedding schedule.
After a year, Busamed experienced reduced Capex spend, zero downtime, reduced power usage, enhanced cybersecurity, and improved disaster recovery capabilities. The move also led to licensing and support efficiencies.
Peter Spies, Datacentrix’s Solutions Manager for KwaZulu-Natal’s Commercial division, highlighted that Busamed has seen ROI from the beginning of the implementation due to power consumption gains. Datacentrix has also provided Busamed with a fixed five-year cost for its cloud infrastructure, allowing for clear future needs prediction.
Datacentrix’s consultative, outcomes-focused approach was crucial to the project’s success. Moodley advises healthcare businesses considering cloud migration to choose a service provider committed to a long-term partnership.
“As a new Datacentrix client, our experience has been excellent. The Datacentrix team invested significant time and resources in understanding our requirements before any guarantee of business,” Moodley concludes.
