Johannesburg, 02 Oct 2007
Princeton Softech, the market leader in enterprise data management, has announced that Discovery, leading global health assurer and life assurer based in South Africa, selected Princeton Softech Optim as its enterprise data management solution for managing healthcare and insurance information.
After experiencing business growth in excess of 20% to 30% per year, Discovery decided to invest in Optim's archiving capabilities to manage continued data growth across its enterprise applications, support international compliance initiatives and lower infrastructure costs.
With almost two million lives covered, and more than more than 600 000 claims received each week in the South African market alone, senior IT management at Discovery realised that if exponential business growth continued, they could no longer ignore the need for archiving.
After evaluating the market's offerings and analysing Optim's business case, Discovery found it could potentially save between R332 000 and R398 500 ($50 000 to $60 000) per month in storage costs alone by simply managing data growth.
"Expenses increased on the storage side because data growth was compounding our storage requirements. I think there are two expenses; one is the calculable, based on the amount of hard disk usage. The other is more an opportunity cost because accumulating more and more historical data impacts service levels for online processes, reporting and maintenance," added Leopold Malan, Chief Information Officer of Discovery Health. "We based the entire business case for Princeton Softech on only disk storage space savings and found that we would achieve a full return on investment. All other service level improvements are a bonus to us."
With a focus on breaking into new markets worldwide with its consumer-driven healthcare plans, Discovery also chose Optim because it would provide a broad centralised approach for managing and protecting customer's medical data, support the various international compliance laws, and achieve a greater value from critical business applications.
"Our company does business in different world markets, so we are obviously under a lot of pressure from a compliancy perspective," said Malan. "Implementing an enterprise data management solution that includes best practice processes and archiving capabilities allowed us to quickly provide our business users with the confidence level that we will be able to manage archiving in a world best practice way."
IT service and solution provider, Datacentrix, a local Princeton Softech partner, assisted with the implementation of Optim's archiving and test data management capabilities within Discovery's existing IT infrastructure.
"Partnering with Princeton Softech was an opportunity to not only help Discovery see immediate ROI, but also help it protect sensitive personal data with advanced data privacy technology," said Rob Shaw, product manager at Datacentrix.
Established in 1993, Discovery Health offers consumer-driven private health care to almost two million people in South Africa. The group also incorporates Discovery Life, a life assurer established in 2000, which covers 400 000 lives. Discovery's international operations include US Destiny Health, covering 60 000 people; and PruHealth, which offers consumer-engaged private medical healthcare in the UK and covers 75 000 lives.
"As businesses across industries continue to expand into global markets, there is increased demand for scalable enterprise data management capabilities that support international compliance and data protection initiatives," said Paul Winn, chairman, chief executive officer and president of Princeton Softech.
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