Gardner: I'm interested why data management has been a primary driver for you as you've looked to adopt both the private cloud and VDI. What is it about the data equation that’s made this look like a good solution for you?

Fuss: We need our data to be accessible everywhere, at every time, no  matter   what provider is at what facility. Even from an engineering and    technology standpoint, no matter what system analyst, what network    engineer may sit down wherever they are to troubleshoot an issue, we need that common set of tools.

Common repository

We need the common repository of information for a caregiver. That would be the electronic medical information. It could be the x-rays, the slides, the CT scans,    or the results that were dictated by a radiologist. Whatever it might    be, that information needs to be available in a flexible manner and    delivered directly to the deskside experience.

Now, if that’s a desktop, it needs to be on a regular PC, but if we're talking about a tablet, we need to accommodate the tablets that people bring in and have come into the facility and are now actively being used, or zero client technology.

We    have all the different technologies and pieces. We're trying to   promote  these pieces to be used and trying to be flexible with   accommodating  them and getting people to the information that they need   so they can  take care of the first priority, which really is patient   care.

Gardner: Tell me about the extent of your  distributed campus and environment.   Not only are you dealing with many  different types of data and many   different endpoints, but you're also  distributing this across a   multitude of different environments.

Fuss: We have two main acute hospitals.   We have a nursing home, a cancer  center, outpatient care offices, and   several different offices all  around the community. So the data truly   needs to not be resident in  one spot.

Where    you're accessing that data from or where you're using it is  seamless    to the end user and provides a solid customer experience.

We also needed to have a secured disaster recovery (DR) facility, so that if anything were to happen to our primary data center that’s on one of the campuses, we could flex seamlessly over.

So    building a cloud for us made total sense. That cloud hovers between   one  of two data centers. One is at one of the acute facilities, and   then  100 miles away in another state, we have another data center. Our   cloud  roams between the two, and we have data flowing from each area.

So    the connection really is no longer about where it’s physically  located   by any restriction. It’s more of just gaining access to the  internet  and  being able to make connections. Where you're accessing  that data  from  or where you're using it is seamless to the end user  and provides a   solid customer experience.

... There are a lot of people who can embrace different types of clouds. You've got hybrid clouds,    private clouds, public clouds, all with different offerings. For us  it   made sense to do a private cloud. For others, it may make sense to  do   hybrid type cloud.

As we move toward the future, I can see  that   we might be able to offload some of our services toward the  public   cloud. As we increase the size of some of our data and we have  patient   care cut over to the side, there might be some other data that  does not   follow the same guidelines. We can put that into a secure  public cloud   and attach everything.

I'm    not worried about theft of an individual device, because the device     has nothing more on it than some connectors to get somewhere.

VMware is coming out with those tools and using those tools to make that  kind   of continuation project possible to look at. We're very excited  about   some of the initiatives that we've seen at VMworld -- the vCloud Director,    with security, the different layers built into that that could make    some of the public cloud usable for us for specific applications.

Gardner: Correct me if I am wrong, but it sounds as if private cloud to   you means better security.

Fuss: Oh, it does, most definitely. I'm no longer worried about the  endpoint   device walking away from us. I'm not worried about theft of  an   individual device, because the device has nothing more on it than  some   connectors to get somewhere.

When we were first embracing  zero   client technology in a lot of places, we did some studies. We  talked to   some different people who had already embraced it. One  particular   hospital I spoke to said they had on video someone stealing  a zero   client device, perhaps thinking that they had stolen some  great new   utility tool for home, a new PC. They were all excited.

They  also   have them on video, bringing it back the next morning, because  they   couldn’t do anything with it when they got to their house. Using  cloud,   using the technologies that ride in the cloud, like VMware View and access to the data through VMware View, really helps to lock things down and it helps to prevent things.

No data leakage

In the past, somebody could have taken a PC, and let’s say that PC could have had metadata on it or could have had some files on it that were saved in someway.   It  was comical to hear that story from another person who was in a   similar  situation as us, where there was no data loss or data leakage,   even if  that device had never come back. So the cloud really has   tightened  things down for us.

One of the primary concerns for our electronic medical records is that it’s patient data, financial data, and so needs to be PCI-, and HIPAA-compliant.    All the different compliance standards that we need to abide by are   all  satisfied with the ways that these machines are locked down, by the   way  the cloud is moving, and where we allow it to move to.

Gardner: How do you view private cloud and VDI  -- separate, distinct,  together? What’s the relationship?

Fuss: They're definitely together. They have to be together. In my opinion,    it’s what makes sense. We want to see the data tight. We want to see   the  integration tight. We can have a cloud where the data roams back   and  forth, but the connection into the cloud actually uses that data.

As    I sit here on a device, a personal device at the office that is    connected to my virtual desktop instance, this device doesn't even have    to be on my network. I'm utilizing a public network that we have here   at  the hospital system and I've connected into my virtual desktop. I   have  full accessibility. I'll flip over here in a few minutes when I go   into  another meeting. I'll bring my iPad with me, another personal device, and I'll be connected right to that same virtual desktop.

So    the cloud has allowed me, with View, to seamlessly move between all    these different devices. I no longer am tied to something. I'm no  longer   tied to a specific physical location, a physical anything. I  really am   completely mobile. I can work anywhere at any time and have  that same   common set of tools.

I    should no longer call it disaster recovery. I should call it our     second data center because even though it really is 100 miles away, I     can still sit there and work all day long just like I'm anywhere else.

It    doesn't matter if I'm working out of the DR site. I should no longer    call it disaster recovery. I should call it our second data center    because even though it really is 100 miles away, I can still sit there    and work all day long just like I'm anywhere else. That ability is    really the value that using a cloud and using View gives you.

I    want a physician in his office, out on the road or wherever they might    be, at home, in a practice have access to that same data and have a    similar look and feel every time they connect from whatever device.    That's what these solutions that we've opted for have provided for us.

...    We can already see the expansion, the use of that technology in    different areas. We have some physicians with iPads working throughout    the facility, visiting the patient’s bedsides, looking at their charts,    all that kind of flex room is great.

I've seen it in our    administrative areas, our human resource officer using iPad remotely.    We’ve had our Chief Information Officer using an iPad, using a PC at    home, and connecting through the View client to her machine.

We’ve    gotten support not just from forcing the technology out there, but by    people asking for the technology. That’s how you can tell you have a    good product. People asking, "Can I be moved to this new product,    because the flexibility of my supervisor, director, whoever is using is    what I need."

Hit a home run

If    the director calls saying, "I need this employee to have this    flexibility," you know you've hit a home run with the technology. I    haven’t had anybody call asking for another PC at another location for    the same person to work. I have people calling saying, "I really need  to   get them onto this technology as soon as it’s possible, because  it's   made this employee so efficient. I need to do that for everybody  else."

... Also, everything that we're doing   allows us not to  focus on location, and that's the big thing. We break   away from  location. So where is the data center? Is it going to be   affected by the next hurricane coming up the East Coast? Well, if we  have a fear of where the   hurricane is, we can move our data center 100  miles inland. Or if we   think that inland is going to be more affected,  we can keep it in Rhode   Island, which is right on the ocean.

So  we have that ability,   and nobody knows where that data is other than the  IT department. We   know it's within the system, within the security, but  nobody would ever   notice the difference or question where the data is  running or   residing. They might ask, and we could tell them, but nobody  says,   "Wow, that's slow" or "I can see a difference." None of those kind  of   calls comes in as the cloud flexes.

Gardner: At  VMworld, you've had a chance to look over View 5, and the  PC-over-IP benefits there; is that something that’s in your pipeline?

Fuss: Absolutely. We’re blessed to be in the VMware 5 beta test user group,    and we’re loving what we see. We like the performance. The PC-over-IP    expansion is amazing. They’ve written a great protocol there with  their   partners, and that is the technology that’s going to continue to  drive   the reinvention of the desktop.

We’ve gone through the    reinvention of the desktop a few times in my career, from somewhat dumb    terminals to smart terminals to client server. We seem to be making  our   way back to where we’re keeping our data safe in data centers and  in   silos. We’re giving people a great end-user experience to give them  a   full PC feature-set. We’re doing it all securely and we’re doing it  all   with products that integrate seamlessly with one another, and  that’s   really the goal.

We seem to be making our way back to where we’re keeping our data safe in data centers and in silos.

We    want the user to sit down and feel comfortable with whatever   technology  they use, and to have a way to take care of our patients   that need our  help and take care of what other important administrative   business they  may do, so we can keep moving forward.

...  So   the benefits are there, and they’re just growing now, as it's    integrated and being used more in the clinical areas. We’ve seen some    growth recently. Even our pharmacy staff is starting to carry iPads    around, when they’re doing inventories of some of the medication    machines and being able to get that information right there, but on a    device that’s secure. If they were to leave it behind, nobody could    connect to anything, and that data all sitting safe inside the data    center.

So the adoption is there, the benefits are already there,    and it's just growing and growing. Every time I turn around, we’re    bumping another 50, another 75, virtual machines, into another pool of machines for a new purpose, and that’s the expansion that I keep wanting to encourage.

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