HEALTHCARE ORGANISATION CASE STUDY

Background

With its HSCN connectivity contract up for renewal, the ICB was keen to leverage funding available via NHS England’s Gigabit Pathway for Health initiative. It engaged Redcentric to help with its network transformation programme. Impressed by Redcentric’s track record in the sector, the ICB’s IT team worked with Redcentric, ahead of the procurement process, to shape the commercial tender. With a clear understanding of the ICB’s vision, Redcentric was successful in winning the business for an SD-WAN service and connectivity.

Challenges

The ICB knew that it was taking on a large-scale project with an ambitious timescale. Instead of opting for straightforward ‘renewal,’ which would simply maintain the status quo, it opted for ‘transformation,’ to achieve modernisation and optimisation. To get the estate future-fit and, critically, ready for NHS England’s Internet First approach, it needed a partner with the expertise to design and deliver the right solution and de-risk the migration. The ICB was focused on removing technical constraints and achieving greater flexibility and adaptability; and it wanted its in-house team to have a co-management role going forward.

Solution

Redcentric recommended a Fortinet-based secure SD-WAN, comprising of a high-performance underlay and an intelligent overlay edge network.

Underlay – physical connectivity

• Fully managed, transport-independent WAN circuits with 10GB circuits for the ICB’s two data centres and 1GB links into every GP site; options for hybrid private VPN and Direct Internet Access (DIA), or single service model of Local Internet Breakout/DIA for each site. Centralised HSCN connectivity.

Overlay – SD-WAN fabric

• Fortinet-based SD-WAN delivered via FortiGate edge and core firewalls, built as a hub (utilising diverse Redcentric data centres) and spoke (all ICB sites) topology.
• Fortinet’s Automatic Discovery VPN (ADVPN) to enable spoke sites to dynamically build encrypted tunnels to other spoke sites, and to any external destination, including private or public cloud or third party environments .
• Dedicated FortiManager appliance for greater control and to enable the co-management option.
• FortiAnalyzer reporting platform encompassing all FortiGate SD-WAN edge devices.

Key benefits

• Optimisation – all WAN paths will be used to forward traffic creating an active/active WAN environment for optimal utilisation and cost-efficiency.
• Security – internet-located services/applications to route direct out to the internet, leveraging the FortiGate’s UTP functionality to double down on security.
• Speed – traffic to take the most direct forwarding path between any two sites, rather than traversing through a central hub, improving speed and contention.
• Smarter utilisation – a shift away from the traditional IP destination lookup routing paradigm to a more granular application-level forwarding paradigm, allowing smarter utilisation of the network.
• Centralisation – centralised management and orchestration, with pushed updates out to edge appliances reducing provisioning and maintenance.

Business benefits

• Future-fit – the new level of flexibility, scalability and enablement futureproofs the ICB against any longer-term uncertainties around HSCN and any strategic shift from NHS England; it also equips it to plan with confidence, to be able to add new sites, services and circuits effortlessly to meet demand or to innovate around care delivery.
• Internet First – the solution supports the shift towards more SaaS or internet-based applications as directed by NHS England, with no compromise in security or performance. SD-WAN delivers a fast, smart, robust, agile network with huge bandwidth increases supporting an Internet First approach.

• Achieving more for less – SD-WAN is a trigger for optimisation and greater efficiency, performance, reliability, resilience, security, and agility, all achieved with less cost, risk, waste and complexity.
• Improving patient outcomes – more reliable access, greater throughput, faster responses, service innovation, and system users less fraught by the technology and more focused on patient care.
• Trusted partnership – the ICB team has more confidence around day-to-day operations and future planning because of the trust it now has in its IT delivery partner. Redcentric’s expertise and track record in healthcare, its meticulous bid response, and pragmatic consultancy style and helpful ‘can do’ approach throughout, have been stand-out features for the customer.

Outcome

The move to SD-WAN supported the vision of the ICB to pursue an Internet First approach and eliminate technical debt, rather than just maintaining the status quo. The ICB now has an IT partner with the domain expertise, networking expertise and delivery ethos to make a success of the network transformation. The migration to SD-WAN is a win-win, with gigabit connectivity and intelligent routing delivering better performance and resilience today and ensuring the ICB is ready for the future.