VMware Helps Catholic Healthcare West Reduce Capital and Operating Expenses, Increase Operational Flexibility
VMware Platform Supports Clinical Applications and Automated Health Information Systems, Reduces Hardware Costs by nearly 90% and Power Costs by 30%
PALO ALTO, Calif. -- April 7, 2009 -- VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced that Catholic Healthcare West (CHW) has deployed VMware’s industry-leading virtualization and management suite, VMware Infrastructure 3, to simplify and streamline IT operations, resulting in significant hardware and power cost savings.
CHW is the eighth largest hospital system in the U.S., spanning 41 locations in Arizona, California and Nevada, with some member hospitals tracing their roots back to the 1800s. Like many healthcare providers, CHW has seen its data stores grow by orders of magnitude in recent years, and its application environment has expanded to encompass more than 1,000 instances of business and clinical systems. The traditional approach to managing this cyber sprawl, while still complying with strict industry regulations and ensuring reliable disaster preparedness, requires massive amounts of hardware. CHW realized that this approach was not sustainable and opted to move in a better direction by virtualizing much of its infrastructure.
In the past twelve months, CHW has virtualized more than 800 applications, eliminating enormous amounts of hardware, lowering IT costs, and saving energy. As a result, CHW estimates hardware costs have dropped by 87 percent and associated power costs for IT operations have dropped by more than 30 percent. CHW’s carbon footprint has also been reduced significantly, with associated BTU consumption for heating and cooling cut by approximately 50 percent.
“We’re running 870 virtual machines on 92 physical hosts, and we’re continually virtualizing more business-critical applications,” explained Darren Smith, vice president of Technology and Infrastructure at CHW. “Some of our physical hosts are running 40 virtual machines. Over the next few years, we expect to continue to see significant savings on energy and equipment costs as we continue our virtualization efforts, which allow us to be good stewards of the organization’s resources, as well as those of the planet.”
CHW is also recovering rack space, which is extending the life of the organization’s datacenter. “Just as important as the cost savings is the operational flexibility,” said Smith. “We can provision a virtual machine in one hour, which allows us to be very responsive to the needs of our hospitals,” he added.
Among the applications that CHW has virtualized on the VMware platform are mission-critical business systems, clinical applications and health information systems. According to Ash Shehata, director of IT Operations at CHW, the organization is also realizing the benefits of virtualization without having to make tradeoffs in reliability or performance. “We’re able to deliver exactly what our medical professionals need to provide excellent patient care,” said Shehata. “The VMware platform stability, scalability and tool set deliver consistent results.”
As part of its VMware implementation, CHW is using VMware vCenter to simplify and centralize system management, automate core processes, accelerate test and development, and help ensure high availability. To help make certain rapid and sustainable success with its virtual infrastructure, CHW worked with VMware Consulting Services to help implement best practices for managing its virtual environment and increase proficiency with its new approach to IT operations. For more information about Catholic Healthcare West, please visit www.chwHEALTH.org.
About VMware
VMware (NYSE: VMW) is the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter. Customers of all sizes rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2008 revenues of $1.9 billion, more than 130,000 customers and more than 22,000 partners, VMware is one of the fastest growing public software companies. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is majority-owned by EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC). For more information, visit www.vmware.com.
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Forward-Looking Statements
Statements made in this press release which are not statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements and are subject to the safe harbor provisions created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements relate, but are not limited, to continuing customer adoption and deployment of our virtualization technologies. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: (i) current uncertainty in global economic conditions that pose a risk to the overall economy as consumers and businesses may defer purchases in response to tighter credit and negative financial news, which could negatively affect product demand; (ii) further adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; (iii) delays or reductions in consumer or information technology spending; (iv) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures, industry consolidation, entry of new competitors into the virtualization market, and new product and marketing initiatives by our competitors; (v) our customers’ ability to develop, and to transition to, new products, (vi) the uncertainty of customer acceptance of emerging technology; (vii) rapid technological and market changes in virtualization software; (viii) changes to product development timelines; (ix) our ability to protect our proprietary technology; (x) our ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; and (xi) fluctuating currency exchange rates.