Concord Communications, Inc (Nasdaq: CCRD), a global provider of Business Service Management software solutions, today announced that Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation, Inc has standardised on Concord`s Business Service Management (BSM) software.
The Chicago-based healthcare provider has deployed Concord`s suite of IT infrastructure management solutions, including the company`s new Business Service Console, to manage the performance and availability of mission-critical applications, systems and networks that support more than 500 physicians and over 1 000 health professionals across its multi-specialty organisation.
"Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation prides itself on having the power to deliver unequalled care to our patients," said Henderson Jones, network analyst, Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation.
"In order to achieve this goal, our technology infrastructure must be available at all times, and must respond at peak performance levels. Concord`s Business Service Management software will enable us to proactively identify and avert problems before they impact service level performance, regardless of where they occur across our infrastructure. In fact, of all the vendors we reviewed, Concord was the only one that addressed our need for an end-to-end management solution for applications, systems and networks."
According to a recent study by IDC, the average healthcare organisation suffers approximately $5.9 million annually in lost revenue and lost productivity due to IT downtime - defined to include both outages and service degradations. Concord`s Business Service Management software tackles this problem by minimising both the number and duration of infrastructure slowdowns or outages. In a separate report, Infonetics Research found that the total cost of IT downtime is attributable to three main issues: 32% to application downtime, 16% to server downtime and 17% to network downtime (1).
As a result, solving the "downtime dilemma" is only possible with a complete end-to-end management solution.
After a thorough evaluation of infrastructure management solutions, Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation selected Concord`s BSM offering based on the software`s ability to map IT services to its business initiatives, measure the actual end-user experience and proactively manage applications, systems and networks end-to-end. With Concord`s new Business Service Console, Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation will be able to give IT and business executives a real-time view into the status of their mission-critical business services. The Business Service Console`s executive view shows the status of key business services from the end-user`s perspective - the availability and performance of the services. The Business Service Console`s operational view provides additional aggregated data from the applications, systems and networks that make up the services, offering operations better workflow to identify and resolve issues faster and more easily. This end-to-end, integrated view sets Concord apart in the Business Service Management market.
"Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation`s adoption of Concord`s BSM solution demonstrates our unique ability to address a key customer pain point - IT downtime - from a complete end-to-end perspective," said Tom Hayes, director of product marketing for Concord Communications. "For many of today`s leading healthcare providers, Concord`s BSM software solution is the link between IT services and business needs, improving patient care by proactively managing the technology that medical staff depend on and detecting problems before they impact patients."
Keeping patient data in motion
Delivering quality medical care requires more than well-trained doctors and the latest medicine and equipment. Medicine is an information-based profession and if critical patient information is not delivered on time to the appropriate caregivers, patient outcomes can be affected. With Concord managing its IT environment, Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation is better able to provide for secure and rapid movement of patient data. Some examples include the transmission of large digital X-rays and patient medical records in accordance with HIPAA regulations.
Equally important to the purchasing decision was the fact that the Concord solution allowed Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation to proactively manage the quality and reliability of its technology infrastructure so that service degradation issues could be identified and solved before they resulted in extensive network degradation or failure. For an organisation that deals with critical health decision situations daily, IT delays are not an option. With Concord, Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation`s IT staff can pinpoint potential problems in the IT infrastructure in minutes, rather than hours, and address them before patient care is compromised.
Many of the world`s leading healthcare organisations have incorporated Concord`s BSM software solution into their IT management plans because of its ability to maintain reliable infrastructures and deliver optimum performance of business services at lower costs. Concord also helps companies reduce capital expenditures through informed capacity planning - identifying under-utilised infrastructure components and suggesting strategies for reallocating existing resources to maximise value.
(1) The Costs of Enterprise Downtime, North America 2004, Infonetics Research, February 2004
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Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation, Inc is a premier, multi-specialty physician organisation committed to providing high quality care to patients, and to supporting the research and academic endeavours of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. Founded in 1980, the foundation is an independent not-for-profit organisation, governed by a board of directors.
Foundation physicians are full-time faculty members or researchers at the Feinberg School of Medicine and are on the attending physician staff at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Today the foundation includes more than 500 physicians and over 1 000 health professionals and other staff, working together in more than 40 medical and surgical specialties and subspecialties.
Concord Communications
Concord Communications, Inc (Nasdaq: CCRD) provides an integrated solution that enables companies to map their IT services to business needs, measure their actual end-user experience, and manage their applications, systems and networks. More than 3 000 companies worldwide, including 23 of the world`s 24 largest service providers, rely on Concord to optimise IT services to drive business success. Based in Marlboro, Massachusetts, Concord maintains offices around the globe, and can be found on the Web at www.concord.com.