Abstract
This Health Industry Insights report profiles the second-year results of the
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center' s (UPMC' s) three-year, four-phased IT
transformation program (with IBM as its technology partner) that involves
standardizing, consolidating, and virtualizing the UPMC server environment and
implementing an ITIL-based operating environment. This report summarizes our
recently completed analysis of the second phase of this three-year project, and
includes the first two stages of server and storage virtualization and the
early stages of process improvement and software tool deployment. The results
indicate that virtualization is delivering the anticipated operational and
economic benefits UPMC expected, and more.
"As the enabling technologies mature, server virtualization is rapidly moving
from leading edge to mainstream in many industries. But in healthcare, there
are still very few cases of successful early adoption on the scale of UPMC' s
effort," says Marc Holland, Health Industry Insights program director of
Provider IT Research. "UPMC has realized significant economic benefit to date
from its virtualization efforts. This landmark effort is one that other
provider organizations should seek to emulate."