Convergencia Research, Consultoría especializada en Latinoamérica y Caribe
Monday, June 29, 2020

Hyperconvergence models are here to stay in the Health vertical

To sustain the digital transformation in this segment, the investment in infrastructure goes towards hyperconverged models (Hyper-converged infrastructure –HCI-), which combine the virtualization of storage, computing (virtual machines and containers) and security (firewalls, for example).

In terms of technological infrastructure for the Health sector, there is a fragmented picture, which is being tested today with the Covid-19 pandemic: on the one hand, highly affected segments, such as doctor's offices, scheduled care centers and worrying exams, which saw their activity interrupted and they had not ventured into digital transformation; on the other, health centers - mostly private - that had been previously prepared and were able to react more quickly to the need for flexibility required by the health emergency.

The latter advanced their business plan and derived investments - if they had not already done so - towards five aspects: business processes (digital files, electronic medical records, sending documentation via apps); use of mobile devices for daily work and virtual diagnosis; security of equipment and data that runs on them (when moving part of the medical equipment to their homes); asepsis (mobile units for random tests) and DevOps (acronym for “development and operations”, in reference to agile development and movement towards cloud apps).

To support these props of digital transformation, investment in infrastructure goes towards hyperconverged models (Hyper-converged infrastructure –HCI-), which combine virtualization of storage, computing (virtual machines and containers) and security (firewalls, for example). Diego Quintana, CEO of Wetcon, confided to Convergencialatina that health entities generally start this path with digital business processes, and then they add the simplification of computer centers and equipment security: “Half of our clients in The Health vertical is testing the hyperconvergence concept. They are private hospitals, laboratories and social works in which we install a physical server to carry out tests, in the midst of the emergency.”

In addition to a rapid ROI for this type of infrastructure investment –between 12 and 24 months-, what health centers seek is flexibility to respond to increased demand (particularly in areas of intensive care) or changes in the model of business (for example, laboratories that saw their activity diminished and went out to install mobile test units at the factory entrance). In this sense, the creation of virtual desktops or VDI is one of the most agile concrete implementations in a hyperconvergence scheme. “Prior to the pandemic, desktop virtualization was not in the healthcare sector, and is accelerating today. It also serves to prevent different people from using the same equipment," added Quintana.

The greater demand in VDI for this vertical also generated concern about the security and availability of information, now transferred in many cases outside of health centers. Dmitri Zaroubine, manager of Engineering Systems for LATAM MCA at Veeam, dedicated to data recovery, confirmed this new interest from the healthcare vertical, although he warned that the backup is not seen as a priority. Virtual desktops carry the risk that an attack on a user, with access to common management tools, will “infect” the rest of the company's users. “The challenge in the health sector is in the budget. Although they are beginning to invest in technology, the largest amounts are dedicated to beds. In a month or two, the limit in the use of technology will be reached,” he warned.

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