The Eastern Health Shared Services (EHSS) has awarded HP a contract to implement a €1.5m server hosting and disaster recovery programme following a competitive tender.
Under the terms of the three-year contract, the HP data centre at Citywest will provide hosting facilities for all EHSS clients. The existing hosting services at Dr Steevens’ Hospital, which currently houses over 150 servers, will be moved to the Citywest facility. HP’s OpenView software will act as the server and network management platform linking the various hardware elements.
The hosting operation at Citywest will be supported by what HP claims is the first dedicated healthcare ICT disaster recovery service in Ireland comprising extensive back-up, support and recovery facilities based at the HP recovery centre at Santry, Dublin. This facility will allow EHSS, along with specialist health consultant HealthSystems Consultants Limited, to complete the business continuity project started in early 2002.
The EHSS wide area network (WAN) is also being upgraded to support better services and create disaster proof measures to protect the complex inventory of mission critical systems that EHSS manages on behalf of clients. The solution is part of a wider development programme designed to increase ICT service capability and enable EHSS to support larger national projects as well as continuing to support regional ICT work programmes.
Speaking at the announcement of the contract, Valerie Judge, chief officer at Eastern Health Shared Services, said: “This contract will ultimately support our client organisations in enabling them to deliver improved health and social services throughout the region.”
By Brian Skelly
