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prepared by Apropos – A marketing services firm
As the premier provider of consumer health information, Healthwise needed a highly-available site to host its online products. It chose to partner with SolutionPro for its robust colocation facility and responsive, capable support team.
Clients Demand High Availability
 “It’s hard to believe that when we started on our venture into the Internet in the early 90s the first version of our product was one server under someone’s desk here,” said Neal Benz, Chief Technology Officer of Healthwise. “We quickly understood that we needed to reach out to a colocation vendor.”
Healthwise is a content provider of decision-focused consumer health information. Based in Boise, Idaho, and founded as a non-profit in 1975, Healthwise has distributed 33 million self-care guides and now has over 48,000 pages of consumer health information available and searchable on the Internet through websites like WebMD, Yahoo!, Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health System. Consumers use Healthwise information nearly 120 million times a year.
Healthwise serves content to health care providers, health plans, disease management companies and consumer portals. In turn, their patients and customers access this information to make informed health decisions. Benz added, “Although we have an excellent corporate data center here on our campus, we need a colocation vendor for our client-facing hosted products. In order to meet our availability and response time requirements, we need a top-tier vendor with redundant network feeds and all of the other requisites, including backup power, generators, cooling capabilities and so on. And, as we grow over time, we want to depend on our vendor to grow along with us.”
Healthwise Banks on SolutionPro
After evaluating several colocation facilities, Healthwise chose SolutionPro to host some of its health information products, including the Healthwise® Knowledgebase, Information Therapy (Ix) Patient Instructions, and Ix HealthMastery® Campaigns. “We started with half a rack at SolutionPro, and then grew to a rack, and then a couple of racks, and then a cage and now a double cage,” said Benz.
“Our contracts require high standards of availability and responsiveness, and we are able to deliver on those contracts because of the services that SolutionPro provides. It’s cost-effective. It’s high availability. And the service level and responsiveness of the people there are exceptionally high. We’ve been able to depend on SolutionPro as an extension of our team to deliver the high service levels that our clients and their customers deserve.”
Healthwise also uses the SolutionPro facility for offsite backup of corporate data and looks to it as a potential failover site for disaster recovery purposes. “Part of our business continuity plan is to have a very capable site like SolutionPro in our network, so that we can utilize our infrastructure that is housed at SolutionPro in the event our corporate site goes down.”
Looking Forward
While Healthwise owns and maintains its hardware and software at SolutionPro, it has its eye on the managed services that SolutionPro offers. “I like the opportunity to have it there if the time comes when we need it,” said Benz.
“SolutionPro really is a top-tier group for us to work with, and we can depend on them to deliver services and to work through issues together as a team. We’ve just been thrilled with that part of the relationship. That’s what differentiates them from all the other data center vendors I’ve worked with, and I’ve worked with many in other parts of the country. They’re there when we need them, both to plan out future possibilities and to work on today’s issues. SolutionPro is an exceptional group, and we’re looking forward to working with them for years to come.”
About Healthwise
Healthwise is a nonprofit organization with a mission to help people make better health decisions. Nearly 120 million times a year, people turn to Healthwise information to learn how to do more for themselves, ask for the care they need, and say "no" to the care they don't need. Healthwise partners with health plans, hospitals, disease management companies, and health Web sites to provide up-to-date, evidence-based information to the people they serve. To learn more about the Healthwise Information Therapy (Ix) Solution, visit www.healthwise.org |
