Challenged to balance low cost with service level commitments & stringent security requirements, the client asked WGroup to evaluate IaaS alternatives that would enable a SaaS delivery capability to leading healthcare organizations. WGroup demonstrated that many tangible and intangible factors can be transparently combined and systematically assessed to arrive at optimal recommendations for an Iaas solution that satisfies concerns of the corporate parent IT, the business Unit's It and product owners, and prospective customers.

1. Opportunity
With healthcare reform and emerging
trends in value-based care, there is
increasing pressure to reduce
administrative costs and to integrate
processes and data, not only among
numerous sub-stages of the healthcare
process, but also among
different players.
The emergence of new payment and
delivery models (such as ACO’s –
“Accountable Care Organizations”)
presented a significant opportunity for
the client to increase its market share
and footprint in the care delivery and
payment processes.
Additionally, as automation needs
expand for mid- to lower-tier providers
and payers, an opportunity to deliver
traditional on premise products as SaaS
offerings was seen as a potential growth
market for the client.The maturing of
cloud as a delivery model for software
drove the desire to standardize the
technology and re-architect the
disparate applications (many of which
came from previous acquisitions)
into an integrated portfolio.
Many of these applications were
installed on premise, but most were
hosted at client’s data centers.
The way these applications were hosted,
supported and developed availed the
business case for corresponding changes
to offer infrastructure as a service to
client’s customers.
The client sought WGroup’s advice
to assess its current data center
infrastructure, and evaluate the
emerging corporate cloud capabilities
in light of the client’s current and
projected infrastructure needs.
Additionally WGroup was asked to
evaluate alternative internal and
external IaaS solutions.This assessment
included approaches to fault tolerance
and redundancy across platforms,
SLA’s, security for PHI/PII data,
self-provisioning and cost accounting.
Furthermore, several supplemental
processes, which may impact the
effectiveness of the cloud solution,
were reviewed:
• The process for Penetration Testing
and suggested best practices
• Process for Vendor Risk
Management and suggested best
practices
• Monitoring of the applications
and the need for 24x7 support
• The client IT unit’s readiness for
an audit engagement
Drive Your Business
IaaS Strategy Evaluation
WGroup helps a highly regulated fortune 100
healthcare company evaluate alternative cloud
options.
Healthcare | IT Infrastructure Strategy
1
Challenged to balance
low cost with service
level commitments
& stringent security
requirements, the client
asked WGroup to evaluate
IaaS alternatives that would
enable a SaaS delivery
capability to leading
healthcare organizations”

2. After acquiring
a thorough
understanding the
client’s special operating
environment and customer
needs and applying the
tactical objectives, WGroup
reduced the numerous
requirements into a
succinct set of desirable
IaaS design features.
Approach
The WGroup infrastructure team
began the analysis by linking the
client’s strategic goals to infrastructure
requirements.This work drove the
identification and prioritization of key
technical and service attributes for
the IaaS solutions.The infrastructure
tactical objectives included:
• Cost containment
• Self-provisioning / Cost and
service monitoring
• Security / Resilience
• Multi-tenancy enablement
There were five potential candidates
for IaaS solutions:
1. The recently launched corporate
private cloud
2. The business unit’s current data
center assets, to be converted
into a cloud (multi-instance
or multi-tenant) model
3. The business unit’s purpose-built
Support Environment (with high
security for protecting PHI data)
4. A top tier commercial public
cloud offering
5. The expansion of another business
sub-unit’s small cloud assets
currently used for a few
specialized products
Generally, the value of an IaaS solution
depends on many functional and
quality dimensions, including
availability, scalability, acceptably
low latency, and security etc. After
acquiring a thorough understanding
the client’s special operating
WGroup
2
environment and customer needs
and applying the tactical objectives,
WGroup reduced the numerous
requirements into a succinct set of
desirable IaaS design features, namely:
• Automated, rapid provisioning
• Strong DR (disaster recovery) and
business continuity planning
• Adequate protection of PHI data
• Continuous monitoring and
metering capability
• Support model aligned with
product SLAs
• Accommodation of the pay-by-the-
drink licensing model
These six key features were then further
decomposed into a more granular set of
technical attributes and an evaluation
scheme was developed to quantitatively
score the candidate solutions, with
three different sets of weighting
factors depending on which of the
three use cases is being considered:
• The Production Use Case
• The Support Use Case, or
• The Development/QA Use Case
After scoring the solution candidates
along the technical attributes, additional
analyses were performed to evaluate
the relative strengths and weaknesses
of each with respect to qualitative
operational, strategic and financial
considerations, known upcoming
changes to these solution candidates
(such as the addition of a two-site
DR capability already planned,) as
well as impending market or internal
decision drivers (such as healthcare
industry’s acceptance of public clouds).

3. Insights and Advice
WGroup concluded that each of the
three use cases calls for a different
optimal solution:
1. For the Production Use Case – Use
existing business units (BU) data
center hardware (HW) (which
has different HW architectures,)
but affiliate immediately with the
Corporate Cloud’s management/
provision layer. Over the next
3-4 years, migrate products and
clients to the Corporate Cloud’s
model and architecture as hardware
refresh cycles offer opportunities.
As part of this migration, WGroup
recommended that the BU acquire
and manage the new HW and
independent VM clusters to
allay BU customers’ concerns for
security and dedicated support.
2. For the Support Use Case – Build
up the BU’s high security, purpose-
built Support Environment (which
offers restricted copying and full
lifecycle control of PHI data).
Retain the reference architecture
of its HW (incompatible with
Corporate Cloud). However, start
affiliating with the Corporate
Cloud for orchestration purposes.
3. For the Development/QA Use
Case – Migrate from the BU’s
data center over to the Corporate
Cloud over ~ 2 years in phases;
align timing with application
product release cycle boundaries
Value Delivered
WGroup demonstrated that many
tangible and intangible factors can be
transparently combined and
systematically assessed to arrive at
optimal recommendations for an IaaS
solution that satisfies concerns of the
corporate parent IT, the business
unit’s IT and product owners, and
prospective customers. WGroup
further demonstrated that the final
solution need not be a rigid choice
between mutually exclusive options,
but rather a creative combination
of them executed over a transitional
period that minimizes risk and
organizational resistance.
By following WGroup’s
recommendations, the client expects
to benefit from:
IT Infrastructure Strategy
3
• Preservation of valuable local (BU
data center) assets and product-
specific support expertise
• Avoiding need to re-negotiate
existing customer contracts as well
as middleware licensing contracts
• Alignment with corporate
directive to maximize use of the
corporate cloud in the long term
• Presentation of a uniform
IaaS front end to all enterprise
customers for Production uses
• Appropriate level of PHI
data protection for each of
the three Use Cases
• Minimized change management
risk with incremental phased
conversion of existing HW
technologies to standardize with
the corporate cloud technologies
Contact Us
WGroup
301 Lindenwood Drive, Suite 301
Malvern, PA 19355
610-854-2700
CPG_OSRNGCS_100312_006
About WGroup
Founded in 1995, WGroup is a boutique management consulting firm
that provides Strategy, Management and Execution Services to
optimize business performance, minimize cost and create value. Our
consultants have years of experience, both as industry executives and
trusted advisors, to help clients think through complicated and pressing
challenges to drive their business forward.
For more information on WGroup, visit http://thinkwgroup.com