Healthland is a leading healthcare information systems company that links essential information between small community hospitals and their healthcare delivery and business partners. Founded in 1980, Healthland solutions are today deployed in more than 38 states and at 320 community and critical access hospitals in the United States. Healthland is headquartered in Glenwood, Minn., with operations in Louisville, Ky., and Minneapolis, Minn.
Before cable Internet reached its home office in a rural town of 1,800 residents, Healthland relied solely on T1 internet service. In urban areas, the final leg for delivering connectivity between the provider and the user can be mere blocks. In Glenwood, that final leg spans 75 miles where wires can be inadvertently cut during construction, resulting in outages that last up to days. When Healthland added cable as a secondary Internet connection, Paul Codner, IT manager, did not know yet about Ecessa and purchased a product from FatPipe Networks for load balancing.
Codner says he and his team tried for a year to implement FatPipe and received inadequate technical support. “After many attempts, we could not get it to work in our network,” he says. “Finally, enough was enough, and we pulled the plug.” Unable to return the product, Healthland is left with boxes of unusable equipment.
After this frustrating experience, Codner dropped the idea that load balancing was viable for his network. For two years, Healthland was compelled by contract to pay for a second Internet connection without automatic failover. Although they did not experience any major outages during this period, Codner says he knew their luck would eventually run out.
A cold call from an Ecessa reseller introduced Codner to PowerLink. The timing was fortuitous. Healthland was expanding its customer support services to include online incident reporting. They were also countering recruitment challenges inherent with small-town companies by hiring developers elsewhere in the United States and overseas to work remotely. Codner was concerned about the heavier strain expected on Healthland’s network and decided to see how Ecessa was different from the failed implementation he had experienced with a competing provider.
Ecessa immediately impressed Codner by guaranteeing its products. In addition, they offered comprehensive and accessible technical support. Codner says he also liked the fact that PowerLink is a hardened network appliance without any moving parts and uses a web-based configuration interface.
During the PowerLink implementation, Healthland’s firewall provider was unsure how to incorporate the device into their systems. Ecessa sent them two units for testing and helped them configure the firewalls and test the network. “Ecessa went out of their way to help our firewall provider and ensure that everything would work,” says Codner.
Codner’s experience with Ecessa’s technical support team was also markedly different from his first experience. “When I do need help, I’m not pawned off to a first-level support person who has limited technical knowledge,” he says. “The same engineers both install and support the devices. They know the ins and outs of their products and can jump right in to help me.”
Since the implementation, Codner says PowerLink has easily balanced loads during several outages and fully managed Healthland’s bandwidth requirements. He says it meets all of his needs, and he may even add a second PowerLink as a backup in case mother nature decides to strike.
“Purchasing PowerLink was a no brainer,” says Codner. “Ecessa helped us and our firewall provider configure, test and install the device. PowerLink simply works and is a lot less expensive.”
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PowerLink Series Case Study - Purchasing PowerLink Was a No Brainer (41)
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