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SAN to Trim Healthcare Provider's Costs: Page 2 of 2

Dell’s PowerVault SANs come in a couple of configurations: The $45,000 PowerVault SAN 4.0 setup includes: four QLogic QL220 host bus adapters (HBAs), two Brocade switches, 250 gigabytes of Fibre Channel-based disk array storage (Dell's new PowerVault 660F array), management software, and support for two servers. A $90,000 configuration includes 12 QLogic HBAs, two switches, 800 gigabits of array capacity (scaleable to 7 terabytes), software, and support for six servers.

By moving its infrastructure onto a SAN, Blue Shield expects to get access to patient records in a more timely and secure way. It’s been using an old, proprietary data access system up to this point.

Blue Shield opted to use Dell as the primary vendor to avoid any incompatibility issues, says Dave Bowen, senior vice president and CIO. He refers to the storage systems market as having a “complete absence of interoperability."

According to Gartner/Dataquest, Dell ranks number two behind Compaq Computer Corp. (NYSE: CPQ) in installed SANs. IDC ranks Dell number six in overall storage revenues, at almost $1 billion last year.

— Jo Maitland, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch http://www.byteandswitch.com