Cisco, CDW and Cohesity digitally transform NHS Stockport

Led by Hugh Hughes, Network and Unified Communications Lead, NHS Stockport, the project resulted in 20x faster app performance and substantial multi-year cost savings on licensing.

The Trust – which sees over half a million patients every year across Stockport, East Cheshire and Derbyshire – overhauled its data centre and backup infrastructure to meet the new challenges of running a large network of hospitals and clinics across various sites.

As part of the upgrade, the Trust also required a new remote backup solution to help it meet stringent UK regulations around data handling, privacy and security. This had to include ISO 270001 certification – the international standard for data security.

Hughes explained: “When you have disparate systems and too many management tools, there can be problems with backups, integrations and licensing. We no longer have those problems, thanks to CDW, Cisco and Cohesity.

“We now have the right data centre infrastructure in place, and we know we’ll get more out of it in the months and years ahead.”

The Trust’s IT team, comprised of just 25 people, is responsible for delivering services to more than 6,000 employees, so a technology-led, simplified solution was essential to drive efficiency as well as lower costs.

Collaboration in action

Previously, the Trust had a number of dedicated servers for specific applications and devices, spread across three hospitals and two dozen clinics. Mission critical apps were unable to function at optimal speed for the Trust, and were decentralised, meaning potential vulnerabilities could go unchecked.

CDW worked with NHS Stockport to design and implement a radically different IT infrastructure. The technology solutions provider assessed several options as part of a vendor-agnostic process and recommended a collaboration with Cisco and Cohesity as the most effective approach to modernising the Trust’s IT infrastructure.

Cisco delivered its HyperFlex hyperconverged infrastructure solution, as well as its Intersight SaaS Systems Management platform, and its Application Centric Infrastructure.

Cohesity software was installed on Cisco UCS servers to provide modern data management tools, fast backup, and data recovery capabilities.

The Cisco and Cohesity solutions were installed across the Trust’s two data centres, providing integrated backup, archiving and file storage capabilities. The integrated solutions are providing synchronous replication, continuous backups, and seamless failover, helping to ensure the data centres’ resiliency to potential attacks or system failures. It also reduced the backup time from days to just hours, and for some workloads, to minutes.

The Trust’s IT team now has a single, easy-to-use dashboard to monitor usage and capacity, and to predict future requirements. This has significantly increased operational efficiency for the organization’s small IT team.

Joachim Mason, UKI Director, Specialists, at Cisco, said: “Having a simplified, robust and resilient data centre infrastructure is important for any organisation, but for healthcare providers, it can be critical. That’s why we’re proud to support NHS Stockport together with Cohesity and CDW.”

“Our hyperconverged infrastructure solutions, and SaaS management platform means that the foundation gets a simplified, holistic view of its data centre, while also saving costs and speeding up critical applications.”

Andrew Fitzgerald, Sales Director, Western Europe, at Cohesity, added: “Given the size and specific requirements of NHS Stockport’s IT team, it was clear that a simplified backup and recovery system was needed to ensure operational efficiency, while also helping the team meet the governance requirements.”

“By consolidating the Trust’s legacy IT infrastructure, Cohesity was able to deliver a highly efficient data management solution that removed infrastructure silos so often seen in healthcare organisations. In addition, the NHS Stockport team was able to leverage backup data for development testing while enhancing its security posture– critical as more organizations are being targeted by cyberattacks.”

CDW continues to provide long-term support to the Trust. Next, the firm will work with the Trust to add policy-driven micro-segmentation, multi-tenancy and assurance to the data centre environment. This will be extended to all Stockport NHS hospital campuses and clinics, using a combination of Cisco ACI, Cisco Meraki and Cisco DNA solutions.

Eoin Perera, Head of Healthcare at CDW UK, said: "As a long-standing IT services and solutions provider for Stockport NHS Foundation Trust, we’re proud to work with an organisation that is dedicated to delivering high-quality patient care. We also recognise that outdated IT infrastructure presents major challenges to most healthcare organisations, risking financial wastage, data-breaches, and inefficiencies. Using an agnostic approach, we worked closely with Stockport NHS Foundation Trust to orchestrate the most suitable technology solution to meet its requirements.

“This digital transformation project shows healthcare leaders that you can upgrade IT infrastructure quickly, securely and save money in the process.”