Healthcare’s Future in Florence…Kentucky

A key element to our service delivery is, and will always remain, our ability to provide hardened data center environments to support our clients’ growing technology needs. In September 2006, Perot Systems broke ground on one of our newest data centers in Florence, Kentucky. This new Tier 3 data center (a classification level typically required for financial organizations) has redundant power sources and back-up systems that provide an excellent foundation and local presence for one of healthcare’s newer clients.

The facility, which was once a Cincinnati Bell warehouse that stored telephone poles and trucks, is now a 20,000-square-foot raised floor, multi-client computer facility. The transformation from warehouse to data center represented a significant construction effort. Prior to moving the first piece of production equipment into the facility, the building required everything from basic needs (such as concrete walls, electrical power, heating, and cooling) to the advanced failover features related to generators, chilled and air-cooled water, air conditioning, and handling the implementation of an environmental control system, as well as the certification of all of the facilities.

Coordinating such an effort required the cross-functional coordination of the IS, facilities, healthcare, and account teams to ensure the needs and requirements of each were met. Thanks to extraordinary cooperation by all, construction of the new Florence Technology Center (FTC) was completed in just 9 months, which allowed the healthcare transition team to begin their migration activities for their new client.

First Migration to the New FTC Data Center Complete

The new healthcare client transition to the FTC, which represented one of the largest server migrations in Perot Systems’ history, included the migration of 1,700 servers from the client’s data centers, as well as an additional 800 servers from regional client facilities located throughout the Midwest. The first of two planned data center migrations to the FTC was completed in January 2008, after a 6-month schedule that included 25 individual move packages, the installation of 750 servers, a mainframe, and an AS/400.

The remaining data center migration began in March and was completed in September  2008.

Planning the migration of the client’s assets while the FTC was being built was especially challenging. Much of the $6 million infrastructure equipment related to network, storage, and backups had to be installed and configured before migrations could begin; however that could not begin until the raised floor space was established. To assist in completing these challenging deliverables, the new account team worked with the IS and FTC facilities team to implement temporary power and cooling during the final phase of construction, which allowed the client to meet its aggressive schedule.