Nutanix, announced that Saudi German Health, a private healthcare provider across the Middle East and North Africa, has successfully deployed Nutanix Hyperconverged Infrastructure and Nutanix Prism Pro management solution. The implementation has effectively addressed the complexity, reliability, and scalability issues that previously plagued the IT environment and provided a robust platform to continually and cost-effectively introduce innovative digital services such as remote diagnosis, and enterprise mobility.

Nutanix has helped the organization reduce hardware spending by 40%, enabling redirection of budget into IT initiatives that drive business outcomes and enhance patient care. The solution has also helped reduce the backup window by a factor of 4X, and significantly reduced IT management overheads by offering powerful centralized management of the entire environment.

Saudi German Health – the largest healthcare group in Saudi Arabia and part of BAB Holding Group – prides itself as an industry pioneer and has achieved this by offering world-class treatment and facilities, backed by industry leading technologies. Years of continued and significant investment into cutting-edge technology solutions had left Saudi German Health with a complex IT infrastructure.

Legacy, hardware-based servers, storage technologies and virtualization solutions from several different vendors created challenges of managing multiple licenses, support contracts, and of course, hardware and upgrade cycles. Day-to-day management was difficult in the absence of centralized monitoring of the IT environment.

The project to overhaul and modernize the IT infrastructure was awarded to Megamind IT Solutions – an organization under the HSB Holding Group. The company partners with the world’s leading IT vendors to imagine, design, and engineer business solutions and customer expectations. Megamind IT Solutions has been involved in several projects in the MENA region – making businesses more intelligent, creating smarter solutions for enhancing accessibility, controlling cost by reducing waste, and managing people and information for proficiency.

In addition to the above, was the risk posed to the availability and smooth operation of the business that was of greatest concern. Hamza Sobhi Batterjee, President of HSB Holding (part of BAB Holding Group) said, “Our Hospital Information System (HIS), and our HYCU backup and disaster solution were running on this legacy infrastructure. With all our patient data, and mission-critical applications at stake, we simply could not accept the sub-par backup and recovery performance, that resulted from HYCU being hosted in this environment.”

To combat the IT challenges faced by Saudi German Health, Megamind IT Solutions decided to implement Nutanix HCI technology after a rigorous assessment that involved two other vendors. “Nutanix came out on top as they offered great features at the most competitive price point,” said Batterjee. “Moreover, we thoroughly analyzed the hardware, software, and physical on-site support each of these three vendors could offer and Nutanix ranked highest in these criteria as well.”

The implementation which spanned five clusters across five geographically dispersed locations was completed in under five days, without any impact to the operations of any Saudi German hospitals and clinics. “We’re a 24×7 operation, and with patient lives depending on our services, there’s no scope for error. The fact that we achieved seamless migration without any downtime is testament to the ease of deployment of Nutanix,” Batterjee said.

With HYCU being purpose-built for Nutanix, the deployment has comprehensively eliminated the backup and recovery challenges, with a 4X boost in performance. It has simplified IT management with the IT team no longer having to conduct planned maintenance events.

Nutanix HCI has also enabled an accelerated pace of innovation for Saudi German Health. “Prior to Nutanix, whenever we aimed to undertake a new IT project, we would have to request significant budget for the associated hardware, which often turned into an impasse with the management. However, now that we have realized over 40% savings in hardware spending, we have been able to redirect these funds into advancing our digital services,” said Batterjee.

“Because of the stability and scalability of our Nutanix environment, we have been able to rapidly test and deploy a host of new services. Among these is our ‘Home healthcare services’ offering which proved especially critical through the pandemic as it enabled our doctors to remotely diagnose and treat patients. Similarly, Nutanix has enabled us to manage appointments, payments, and other vital patient services remotely, along with and as part of our tele medicine solution,” he continued.

In a pilot project, aimed at demonstrating the value and effectiveness of empowering clinical staff with on-the-go access to digital data and applications, the IT team has implemented VDI on Nutanix HCI at Saudi German Hospital Dammam.

Batterjee has clear intentions to deepen his organization’s engagement with Nutanix. “We will scale our VDI deployment across all our hospitals and medical colleges. For this, we are keen to implement Nutanix Xi Frame as we have been highly impressed with its performance, scalability, and availability,” he said.

As a medical institution that places the highest emphasis on the ‘human’ aspect of its business, it’s no surprise that Saudi German Health sees tremendous value in its relationship with Nutanix’s local team in Saudi Arabia. “Whenever we have a requirement, the speed and quality of support from Nutanix has been exceptional. Their skills, talent, and professionalism set the bar for the industry,” concluded Batterjee.