In Oct. 2009, Florida-based Automated Document Solutions needed 24x7 access to seven terabytes worth of medical records. The firm turned to a cloud-based option using Host.net’s (News - Alert) virtual private data center service.

The decision "eliminated capital outlays, enabled near-immediate rollout, and helped ADS win the contract," company officials say, "by offering the security of Host.net’s SAS (News - Alert) 70 Type II certified facilities to a client for whom both data privacy and availability are as critical as good emergency room care."

It also provided virtualization benefits "ranging from faster disaster recovery to consolidated storage and centralized application updates for all ADS client locations."

ADS provides document imaging and management services for the healthcare industry, processing over 100 million medical charts, images and other documents a year for clients ranging from small community hospitals to large multi-campus healthcare systems.

“Beyond purchasing the SAN hardware, database and application servers, switching equipment and other hardware to outfit a data center, we would have needed backup, redundancy, full-time staff, and a lot more. That doesn’t include soft costs such as annual support fees,” said Michael S. Crews, director of information technology for ADS.

For ADS, going the cloud computing route, in the estimation of company officials, has "eliminated costly data center build-outs ranging from hardware, installation, redundancy and physical security to annual licensing fees and labor." And these days that's a big advantage.

“If I had to support everything that Host.net is doing for me, I would need two additional full-time staffers for our 7 TB client alone,” Crews said. “Bringing our own data center up to SAS 70 Type II standards would also be cost-prohibitive.”

Another benefit that ADS is reaping from Host.net’s virtualized architecture is the ability to provision additional SAN space on demand. And the same easy scalability applies to server memory in Host.net’s virtualized environment.

“I’ve been in this business for 20 years, including building and designing data centers. Virtualization in general and Host.net in particular allow me to do much more with much less and take a lot of worry off my shoulders,” Crews said.