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A Virtual Lifesaver: Page 3 of 6

After about 16 weeks, we had established three distinct VMware farms that supported many of our important functions, including our Meditech Health Information System application servers, support servers, core infrastructure servers, and servers for enterprise applications such as the Ansos nursing scheduling system, printing, and directory services. We chose not to migrate several applications that were deemed weak candidates for virtualization such as servers regulated by Food and Drug Administration requirements, applications with unique hardware requirements such as the Kronos TeleTime system, and systems that maintain high CPU or memory utilization and enterprise databases.

ADDED BENEFIT

On one hand, virtualization has been a way to make better use of our processors and improve system availability. It's also been a way to reduce the co-location space we've had to rent while we're building a new data center. We found it would cost approximately $3 million to upgrade our hospital facilities to get the power we needed in the San Antonio data center, and since we were physically limited to obtaining only another 2,000 square feet from the San Antonio site, we decided to build a new data center, which we hope to open by the end of this year or in early 2009.

Christus Health,
By The Numbers
For fiscal year 2007,
ended June 30, 2007


Revenue:
$2.8 billion
Income:

$154 million



Data: Christus Health

Over the last year and a half, Christus Health has used virtualization to reduce 824 servers to 83 blade servers with only one application problem. We also decreased the San Antonio data center's electrical/cooling load by 202 kilowatts, even after we had redeployed some of the savings. For every kilowatt that we save in electricity directly related to server consolidation, we save another 80% related to cooling. We translated that to $125,000 per year savings in electrical costs (San Antonio rates). What we aren't spending on co-location space averages $200,000 in cost avoidance.

Christus has spent about $975,000 to put all the technology in place, including blade servers and virtualization software. We redeployed $1.5 million worth of hardware harvested from the consolidation. With our total cost avoidance near $3 million, our net cost avoidance is $1.8 million.

Our total cost avoidance encompassed three years worth of electrical source costs, depreciation avoidance of a data center build cost, and server reallocation and reserve capacity. The difference between the total cost avoidance and the hardware, software, and implementation costs equals $1.8 million (rounded off). In other words, we would have spent $1.8 million more than we did to provide the same level of processing and IT capabilities.NEED FOR THE HUMAN TOUCH
One factor to consider when performing a major technology migration is the human resources that will be required. Concurrent to rolling out these new technologies, we were adding many new systems and dramatically extending the reach of IT in clinical and nonclinical areas, both inside and outside of our hospitals and in new locations. The virtualization technologies don't decrease staffing because applications are still present--they just run more efficiently. If anything, we've needed more competent and specialized people to manage these new technologies in addition to training our existing staff.