Altrecht: "Our IT environment now provides reassurance instead of stress."

Altrecht's central computing environment is located in the Groenekan datacenter, and is where all the institution's computer programs run and its clinical as well as business critical and non-critical data are stored. The EPRs are also fetched from the datacenter. Dieter van Grinsven, ICT team manager, and Peter Bloemink, ICT architect at Altrecht are responsible for keeping the computing environment operating on a daily basis. Says Van Grinsven, "Dataplace is really the beating heart that, day in, day out, enables all our colleagues to practice their profession."

A logical and necessary step

Before moving its IT infrastructure to Dataplace, Altrecht housed its computing environment on its own site. Says Bloemink, "That calls for considerable specialist knowledge, especially in relation to cooling and (back-up) power supply. In the past there were several incidents, unfortunately, which ideally we would have prevented. That shows just how complex it is to run a datacenter. For us it was a logical, and to be truthful a necessary step to migrate to a stable datacenter." His colleague adds, "There is a growing trend towards bringing care to the patient rather bringing the patient to where care is provided. That places the onus on the organisation to be more flexible and to minimise the property we own. At the end of 2016 we became increasingly convinced of the need for a care-free solution for housing our IT infrastructure."

Professionalism, sound advice and friendly contact

In their search for a datacenter, the ICT team spoke with several parties. Says Van Grinsven, "We have been a very satisfied fiber-optic customer of Eurofiber for about fifteen years. So it was a logical step for us to pay a visit to Dataplace. We were shown around the datacenter and were impressed by Dataplace's professionalism. We also approached two other datacenters, incidentally, but they were unable to match Dataplace's proposal and related costings. Not to mention the feeling of security Dataplace gave us." Says Bloemink, "They also gave us sound information and advice on various matters, such as power consumption and the possibilities in terms of cloud services. And, just as importantly, the personal contact with employees is always good. That is a boon in a sterile environment such as a datacenter."

Both men are impressed with the overall layout of the datacenter and the facilities. Bloemink illustrates the point by saying, “Dataplace pays close attention to all the details that might benefit us as a customer. For example, in the central reception area there are machines dispensing coffee, other beverages and food. Nothing new there. What is unique in my experience, however, is a dispenser from which you can disconnect network cables, just in case you might unexpectedly need them in the night. To my mind, this shows that they really understand their customers."

We are fully 

Altrecht's entire ICT team is pleased with the migration. Says Bloemink, "Our IT environment now provides us with reassurance, instead of stress. We benefit from a care-free solution and we know that the likelihood of malfunctions or other service outages is minimal due to the high level of redundancy Dataplace has configured. We would never have been able to achieve this ourselves - at least not at the same cost." Says Van Grinsven, "Dataplace does precisely what we need it to do, and that deserves a compliment."