Guaranteed Connections

Approximately 200 km east of Vancouver and surrounded by mountains, the town of Hope, British Columbia lies on the banks of the Fraser and Coquihalla Rivers. Surprisingly, this is where a growing number of Canadian and American public health organizations and government departments have learned to look for solutions that help them streamline their programs and manage the vast amounts of data they collect. HealthSpace Integrated Solutions Ltd. Creates support systems specifically for this sector, specializing in software designed to administer everything ranging from inspections of facilities such as water systems, flight kitchens and cruise ships, to tobacco enforcement, disease control and more. And despite Hope’s remote location and population of just 7,000 people, the company has had little or no difficulty finding and retaining the skilled personnel it needs.

“Few sectors have uptime demands as critical as health care, and Hope’s remote location made HealthSpace’s need that much more challenging. This is a great example of market leadership for TELUS, not only in the health care sector, but in delivering reliable connectivity under all types of conditions.” – Jon Arnold, Principal, J Arnold & Associates.

“Over time, we’ve discovered a pool of talented people that had not been tapped into before,” says Andrew Price, HealthSpace’s Chief Technology Officer. However, one thing Hope does not have is a large bandwidth data connection, a vital necessity for HealthSpace’s mission-critical needs. The company hosts all of its customers’ data and must provide them with 24x7 access to it via the Web and IBM Lotus® Notes ®. “We needed very high speed backbone type access, as well as earthquake protection, high reliability and redundancy,” says Price. HealthSpace spoke to a number of providers, but ultimately concluded that only TELUS could meet the company’s needs for data storage with high speed access, while also providing cost-effective connectivity in Hope. HealthSpace chose a co-location hosting solution, where its servers are housed at the TELUS Internet Data Centre in Burnaby, British Columbia. Here, physical building and perimeter security is assured, while fire detection and suppression systems, together with uninterruptible power supplies, guarantee uptime, no matter what.

Because HealthSpace has retained responsibility for managing the servers, its employees have the freedom to access the site whenever maintenance is needed or upgrades are ready to be implemented. A managed ADSL service in Hope connects to its servers and clients for a few hundred dollars a month, compared to the $10,000 or more other solutions would cost.

HealthSpace is extremely pleased with all of its connectivity solutions. “The server farm is excellent,” says Price. “The DSL line is of very good quality and reliable. And because TELUS provides our voice service, it simply made sense to keep all our communications with a single provider.”

Solution Benefits

• Mission-critical high speed connectivity for customers
• Low-cost, high-speed connectivity for the company
• Assured virtual and physical security for servers, with guaranteed uptime.