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Harvard Medical School Deploys American Power Conversion's InfraStruXure(TM) On-Demand Data Center Solution to Ensure Highly Available Electronic Course Curriculum and Research Data

Posted on: Tuesday, 9 August 2005, 09:00 CDT

WEST KINGSTON, R.I., Aug. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- American Power Conversion (APC), a leading global provider of high availability systems for network-critical physical infrastructure (NCPI), today announced that Harvard Medical School, one of the first "all-digital" medical schools in the U.S., recently purchased APC's InfraStruXure(TM) solution for the school's new data center in Boston, Mass. As their students, faculty, and researchers become increasingly dependent upon information technology to more effectively educate, research, and diagnose disease, Harvard Medical IT staff is challenged with delivering scalable, cutting-edge technology applications "on-demand," 24x7x365 days per year.

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According to Harvard Medical School's chief information officer, John D. Halamka, "At Harvard Medical School, every lecture is captured electronically, streamed, and archived for playback 'on-demand.' We image and store each microscope slide, which allows students to focus on the histology and pathology not the microscope. Students and professors depend heavily on email for all aspects of their educational experience. On the research and academia side, high performance bio-computing clusters, large data sets, and the sheer volume of data growth create unique demands for high processing power, bandwidth, and advanced storage technologies. We also provide on-demand access to 8,000 medical journals anywhere, anytime. Critical research, communications, and education effectively 'cease' if the data center and networks are not up and available."

One of the key elements of Harvard's success has been the standardization of IT infrastructure to reduce human error that allows them to detect root causes of defects and create shared learning across the organization while also allowing end-users the autonomy they require. Since the data center is the "heart" of the IT operation, they embarked on a project to construct a new data center designed around the same philosophy of standardization as their IT infrastructure.

According to Stephen Martino, director of production operations for Harvard Medical School, "After a thorough assessment of the available solutions, we selected APC's InfraStruXure 'on-demand' design because it was the only system we found that uses standardized, pre-engineered, and pre- tested building blocks that work together as a system. Other solutions we investigated were comprised of a series of unique 'point' products, manufactured by multiple vendors, and not designed to work together as a system. Traditional systems typically alert you to faults only after system problems occur and identifying the defect is difficult due to multiple vendors, a lack of standardization, and heavy dependence on outside specialists. With InfraStruXure and its standardized approach, we immediately receive alerts if the network exceeds a threshold. This allows us to identify where exactly the fault occurred while we remain up and running due to its redundancy. InfraStruXure also allows us to self-remedy the situation through hot-swappable components."

Other specific challenges Harvard Medical School needed to solve that lead to the purchase of APC's InfraStruXure were scalability, reduced cost of ownership and successful deployment of high density applications. The data center constantly must possess the agility to "light-up" new capacity "on- demand" for ever-proliferating data created by research and electronic educational content. Traditional systems forced over-sizing at the outset in order to meet the requirements of projected future growth. This would mean higher up front capital costs and higher operational expense.

High density was also a key consideration in selecting the right solution according to Martino. "In an effort to minimize real-estate costs, we needed to grow our IT equipment footprint vertically versus horizontally. We accomplished that by packing more blade servers with highly dense footprint into each rack. We had always faced some power density issues in our data center where we averaged 1.5 kW of power per rack. As we began to deploy blade servers and storage we were approaching an average requirement of 3-5 kW per rack. Today's traditional systems can only accommodate, on average, 1-2 kW per rack. The InfraStruXure system can support more than 5kW of blade servers per rack and can expand up to 20kW per rack for future increases. InfraStruXure's footprint effectively reduces the amount of real-estate required through its capability to handle high-density blade servers."

Delivering high quality IT at reasonable cost was also a key reason for selecting APC. Rather than buy one oversized 200 kW UPS, Harvard Medical School purchased an InfraStruXure solution consisting of one 40kW, N+1 system, and one 80kW system with 35 enclosures, cable management, environmental monitoring, and metered PDUs. InfraStruXure's design provides the flexibility to scale by simply adding additional racks, batteries and power modules. It is a true "pay as you grow" system without high costs up front. Since real- estate costs in Boston's Longwood Medical area are very expensive and Harvard knew that they would likely outgrow the current facility in a few years, the mobility of InfraStruXure enables the school to "take it with them" versus leaving it and buying a whole new system.

Lastly, legacy systems caused weight concerns because the school is located on the fifth floor of the facility. The footprint of the InfraStruXure 80kW and 40kW systems enabled them to spread weight-loads across the floor instead of concentrating one larger system in one dense spot. APC's local consultant, Matt Russell of Power Resources, also was an indispensable resource in assisting Harvard with several challenges in the design process. Matt and his staff accommodated Harvard throughout the project making sure the school was completely satisfied with the end-product. This involved multiple design sessions, installations and sometimes the reengineering of our initial design to solve several challenges we encountered during the second phase of the project.

"APC is delighted to provide Harvard Medical School with a network- critical physical infrastructure foundation that is held to the same rigorous standards for availability and agility as their network design," said Ed Bednarcik, APC's vice president, global sales. "Harvard Medical School's selection of InfraStruXure represents a terrific example of a fine institution of higher learning that is clearly taking a leadership role within the healthcare industry through their adoption of innovative information technology solutions to improve the quality of medical education and research."

For more information on APC's InfraStruXure and the company's other products, please visit http://www.apc.com/ or call 800-877-4080.

About APC's InfraStruXure

APC's InfraStruXure is on-demand architecture for network-critical physical infrastructure (NCPI). The InfraStruXure design, which integrates power, cooling, rack, management and services, allows the selection of standardized components to create a solution through modular and mobile configurations. This standardization enables an easily scalable architecture designed to meet changing needs and future expansion. This award-winning, patent-pending approach provides increased availability, improved adaptability

and speed of deployment as well as lower total cost of ownership for IT environments -- from wiring closets to server rooms to data centers.

With integrated management becoming a critical component in the NCPI, APC offers comprehensive management solutions including InfraStruXure Manager. A browser accessible, user-friendly tool, InfraStruXure Manager provides monitoring of power, cooling, and environmental management at the rack or room level. APC also provides professional services that optimize the NCPI over the complete data center life cycle, including planning, installation, operation and end-of-life services.

About Harvard Medical School Visit http://www.hms.harvard.edu/ About American Power Conversion

Founded in 1981, American Power Conversion is a leading provider of global, end-to-end solutions for real-time infrastructure. APC's comprehensive products and services for home and corporate environments improve the availability, manageability and performance of sensitive electronic, network, communication and industrial equipment of all sizes. Headquartered in West Kingston, Rhode Island, APC reported sales of $1.7 billion for the year ended December 31, 2004, and is a Fortune 1000, Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 Company. All trademarks are the property of their owners.

For more information contact: Media: Chet Lasell, APC public relations director, 800-788-2208, ext. 2693, chet.lasell@apcc.com Investors: Debbie Hancock, APC investor relations director, 800-788-2208, ext. 2994, debbie.hancock@apcc.com

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American Power Conversion

CONTACT: Chet Lasell, Public Relations Director, +1-800-788-2208ext. 2693, chet.lasell@apcc.com; or Debbie Hancock, Investor RelationsDirector, +1-800-788-2208 ext. 2994, debbie.hancock@apcc.com

Web site: http://www.apc.com/http://www.hms.harvard.edu/

Company News On-Call: http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/046187.html

Source: PRNewswire-FirstCall

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