"Some 24,000 employees and 48,000 voluntary staff, very many of them working shifts, use the Malteser IT systems round the clock at over 700 locations. The corporate network gives them access to a total of 300 applications which we make available as Cloud services," explains Andreas Zander, Head of IT Infrastructure.
Tailored hybrid cloud solution
Parallel to the network upgrade, as part of their "Smart.IT" project, the Malteser renovated the IT infrastructure with a hybrid cloud concept. The members of staff obtain their communication solutions, such as Microsoft Office 365, Sharepoint, Lync and Exchange, from a public cloud. In contrast to this, applications which are critical in terms of data privacy laws, for example the electronic patients' medical records file (EPA), are made available by means of a Private Cloud solution for which the Malteser use Pironet NDH's high-security data centre in Hamburg. Via the servers provided, around 1,200 users from the medical staff access, among other things, the central hospital information system Orbis, in which patients' medical records, ICD keys (diagnostic data), laboratory results and other sensitive information are stored.
"The central private cloud solution permits simple and secure information access and exchange amongst the medical staff. In addition it significantly reduces the administrative effort for us," says Andreas Zander. Smart.IT will in future also be employed to record the numerous voluntary and non-central staff in a central system in order to plan, integrate and employ their resources better. "This will save travel times and costs for everyone involved. Without Cloud Computing and a powerful corporate network, it would be impossible for such resource planning for the staff to work," explains Mr Zander.
About Malteser Smart.IT
The health, social and aid organisation Malteser in Germany today covers a wide variety of duties. The services range from hospitals, senior assistance and care facilities, transporting sick people, rescue services and disaster control right through to outpatient care, social support and many other services and assistance both inside and outside Germany. In Germany alone, 24,000 full-time members of staff and more than 48,000 volunteers are active for the Malteser Association - at over 700 locations.
The Malteser Smart.IT concept covers the reorientation of all the major IT services for the Malteser Association and is focused totally on the requirements of the users. In future the IT organisation will operate the infrastructure using a hybrid cloud approach: For this purpose the IT applications provided centrally in the Malteser Association's data centre will be combined with standard solutions from the public cloud. The aim is to develop and combine the extremely varied services of the Malteser's facilities and aid services by means of intelligent IT solutions and make them fit for the future. This strategy is known as Malteser Smart.IT.
For more information visit: http://www.malteser-business-service.de