Infrastructure as a Service for Agility and Growth Keith Waldorf COO Doctor Dispense
SaaScon 2010: Infrastructure as a Service for Agility, Growth, Performance Keith Waldorf VP V.P. of foperations and dco-founder Doctor Dispense, LLC 2
Overview: Company overview, technology requirements, business objectives Our journey looking for the right solution The pitfalls we faced Why we moved to a physical cloud How we ve been successful, takeaways Q&A 3
About Doctor Dispense: Founded in 2007 Privately held and funded Headquartered in Reno, NV Practitioner Dispensing Solution SaaS S and Cloud Technology 4
What We Do: Web-Based Dispensing Solution Pharmaceutical Repackaging Process Pharmacy Claims in Real-Time Regulatory Reporting (State and Federal) Inventory and Order Management User Security Management Electronic Ordering and Invoicing Credit Card Processing 5
Technology Requirements: Fully managed infrastructure t cloud Managed firewall HIPAA compliant configuration Network segmentation Control over network interconnects Remote VPN client access Dedicated point-to-pointto VPNs HL7 EMR / EHR interfaces SSL / SSH / SFTP interfaces Limited use of CDN 6
Business Objectives: Stay agile Get to market quickly Grow rapidly and dramatically Provide the company with the tools it needs Ensure IT reliability and data security Find the right cloud technology partner Takeaway #1 IT infrastructure is an extremely strategic consideration, and should be effective in meeting the organization s objectives 17a
By the summer of 2007 we had a going concern, And a growing concern So next up Finding the right Infrastructure as a Service solution provider for Agility, Growth, Performance 7a
Searching for the right solution: Current stand-alone solution not secure Limited IT budget is a major issue Google searches turned up dozens of solution providers Large service provider and/or CDN? 2006/2007 technology was all over the map Dozens of quotes requested Use or request a free 30 day trial Pricing ranged from $70/mo to $15k/mo per server for a fully managed solution 9
Read The Small Print the pitfalls we faced 10
The laundry list of issues: Downtime Relaxed internal host and network security Remote platform access Remote platform management Redundancy at network level only Restrictive contracts No upgrade migration path Did I mention downtime? 11
Where we missed some things Every vendor has a long list of contracts and terms of service Read the fine print Understand the billing cycle and overage charges Research uptime statistics online Trace their access points and see where they are really located Call their customer support before you are a customer 12
Things you should explore Every vendor has a long list of contracts and terms of service Read the fine print Understand the billing cycle and overage charges Research uptime statistics online Trace their access points and see where they are really located Call their customer support center after hours and before you are a customer Takeaway #2 When exploring what solution might meet your needs, it may require exploring different options and different service providers. 12a
Why we moved to a physical cloud solution 13
By now we know what we want: The StrataScale Automated Managed Hosting offering seemed to encompass everything we were looking for Dedicated hardware with complete virtualization a physical cloud solution Doctor Dispense met Agility, Growth, and Performance objectives, with the StrataScale server hosting solution: cloud flexibility and scalability with dedicated managed security, reliability, and features = "the physical cloud Takeaway #3 We found that a dedicated environment featuring physical servers with cloud functionality can be an excellent solution. 14
Now the fun stuff! Advanced network configuration and segmentation Use of non-standard ports and ability to configure firewall rules without a technical support ticket Use of management platform to build, reconfigure, and delete servers Re-provisioning and cloning of servers in real-time Disk snapshots and Gold images SAN connectivity and throughput h testing Server console usage Windows / Linux It all worked as advertised 15
Real-time ondemand control of full environment Physical servers and VMs purchased, provisioned, and managed via web portal Exceptional features, enterprise-class performance 15a
Why we ve been successful 16
Flexibility Our software platform continues to evolve Requiring different testing environments and configurations Virtual operations and remote management Configure, change, and update in real-time 18
Takeaways 1. IT infrastructure is an extremely strategic consideration and should be effective in meeting the organization s objectives 2. When exploring what solution might meet your needs, it may require exploring different options and different service providers. 3. We found that a dedicated environment featuring physical servers with cloud functionality can be an excellent solution. 19
Q&A 20
Thank You Keith Waldorf V.P. of Operations and Co-Founder Doctor Dispense, LLC 21