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“Intermountain Healthcare is an excellent example of an enterprise automating its IT operations and embracing innovative, open source solutions,” Red Hat Vice President of Management Joe Fitzgerald said in a statement. “As healthcare becomes increasingly competitive, organizations like Intermountain Healthcare are using innovative open source technologies to help deliver new services while reducing costs.”
The healthcare organization implemented Red Hat virtualization to increase flexibility. Intermountain also wanted to increase cross-platform capabilities to improve performance.
Intermountain sought an open source vendor so it had the freedom of cross-platform compatibility and could afford more advanced technology.
"As we look to the future, it was imperative that we be able to bring IT automation to all aspects of our business, and that our infrastructure was flexible enough to do so,” Intermountain Director of Infrastructure and Operations Bret Lawson said in a statement. “After many considerations, an open source environment was the best option to support our needs, and help streamline operations and reduce costs.”
Intermountain wanted to stop paying for legacy solutions that were too expensive for its limited capabilities.
Open source software solutions are tools that make their source code freely accessible to anyone. Proprietary software only gives end users access to the machine code.
Healthcare organizations use enterprise grade open source. Enterprise grade open source can be used successfully in a healthcare setting because the open source code is taken by a vendor and made secure for enterprise.
Enterprise grade open source is what allows open source software to be HIPAA compliant.
Many healthcare organizations are turning to open source technology because it lets them use more advanced technology to solve many challenges such as interoperability and security, without having to completely replace legacy infrastructure systems – a move that can be expensive.
Entities cannot afford the time or money it takes to rip out their entire infrastructure and replace it. Open source allows organizations to explore different technology options without needing to replace everything. At the same time, entities only invest in the open source license and the developers they need.
Open source lets healthcare organizations replace legacy solutions at their own pace. It allows entities to use proprietary solutions where needed and supplement that technology with flexible open source software.
Open source also gives healthcare organizations more complete control over their IT infrastructure. Entities have the opportunity to gain knowledge because of the open source code rather than being locked out of the development process like in a proprietary solution.
Healthcare organizations benefit greatly from having elevated control over their IT infrastructure solutions because they can build a flexible IT infrastructure around what they currently have and what they hope to implement in the future.
Entities that have the IT staff to embrace open source solutions will see a more significant ROI because open source is constantly evolving. New open source tools will be made available as new technology develops giving organizations the opportunity to constantly improve their IT infrastructure.
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