AHC Deploys Multi Site Replication and Affordable Business Continuity Solution
Overview Founded in 1992, AHC Healthcare Receivables Management is the largest and most successful attorney based receivables management company in the healthcare industry today. AHC has over 500 employees at multiple branch offices, including 150 remote employees that access account files on a daily basis.
Situation AHC recently implemented a document imaging solution which dramatically cut the time and costs associated with the paper transfer of accounts between offices. This digitizing effort was hugely successful; cutting the time it took to open an account from one week to one day.
Remote offices, however, were struggling with time delays trying to bring up the digitized account images across the WAN. AHC implemented Citrix which improved performance for the remote employees but didn't provide a long term solution for the branch offices. AHC needed a faster way for remote offices to access up-to-date digitized account files. Additionally, with all their accounts now in a digital format, AHC needed an affordable and reliable way to quickly recover all of their business critical information in the event of disaster.
Solution Compellent is a critical component of AHC’s business agility efforts and also provides AHC with an affordable business continuity solution.
AHC installed a Compellent Storage Center™ with 4.5TB of Fibre Channel storage in Manassas, Virginia and a duplicate in Fresno, California to serve as the backup data center. AHC also has a Storage Center with over 1TB of Fibre Channel storage in Boca Raton, Florida.
With Storage Center’s Remote Instant Replay™, AHC is able to continuously replicate account images out to branch offices, eliminating the time lag users experienced opening files across the WAN. iSCSI controllers enable AHC to cost-effectively replicate snapshots over IP between Manassas and the backup data center in Fresno. Storage Center provides AHC the granularity to recover to any point in time, so should a disaster occur they can be up and running again in a matter of minutes instead of days or weeks.
Speeds New Account Processing by 80% Storage Center provides AHC the agility to move documents around their network more efficiently. Initially, the AHC IT department committed to cutting turnaround time for new account documents from one week to one day. Remote Instant Replay enabled AHC to cut this time even further. Now, AHC scans documents and replicates them to branch offices every four hours, 80% faster than before. If AHC scans a new account in the morning on the East Coast, their West Coast office is able to work on that account at 9 am the same morning. Employees in branch offices are able to work on the most up-to-date account files without the noticeable delays that used to occur when opening images across the WAN.
Intuitive, Cost-Effective Long Distance Replication Storage Center’s intuitive management console enables AHC to fully automate the replication process, test it and instantly verify success. AHC’s storage administrators quickly mastered Storage Center’s management interface and used the web-based tools to schedule replications and synchronizations to occur roughly every four hours throughout the day. AHC is also able to manage and prioritize every volume it replicates so critical account images are replicated first.
Remote Instant Replay only transfers changes in the data which greatly reduces bandwidth requirements and enables AHC to continuously replicate at a much lower cost. AHC replicates roughly 50GB of data daily which could easily overwhelm current bandwidth allocations. AHC added a Packeteer device to boost bandwidth but relies heavily on Storage Center’s unique bandwidth shaping algorithms to support their high replication volume without costly increases in bandwidth.
Business Continuity at Half the Price Storage Center delivers enterprise-class business continuity features for about half the cost of the competitive offerings AHC considered. Prior to selecting Compellent, AHC relied on a time consuming tape backup rotation for recovery which kept their data safe but could have taken their operation down for up to several weeks if a disaster occurred at their central office. With Storage Center, AHC can recover in roughly 30 minutes should a disaster or disruption occur at any of their locations.
Compellent’s Storage Center has also helped AHC prepare for hurricane season in Florida. In previous years if a hurricane hit in the vicinity of the AHC office their file systems might be unavailable for weeks at a time. This year, AHC will transfer the files from the Florida office to their central office in Virginia and as long as phone lines are available their employees will have the ability to access files and continue working even in the event of a hurricane.