Healthcare IT and the Cloud

For those of you who may not know, I work at HP. I focus on Software Alliances in several areas including Healthcare. I have worked with healthcare providers on and off for over 30 years, from designing medical equipment, to clinical trials, to integration of HP infrastructure with many Software partners.





Lately, I keep hearing people asking about the latest buzz word in computing "cloud". For some of us who endured life before PCs and timesharing, we realize that cloud computing sounds new and wonderful like SalesForce.com but has many similarities to Timesharing. Let me see, many people tied into a hosting provider. One site providing computing to many organizations on a as needed capacity basis. You get the idea. From my view it is just one of the options which a provider has which is no different than any manufacturer deciding on a MAKE vs BUY choice.

Or for a facility to decide on a back up generator vs depending on the power utility.



So how do you decide? I think one has to ask several questions.

1. Can you use standard hardware and software?
2. Can the cloud vendor provide the quality of service needs of my organization?
3. Can my organization's data reside in the cloud ( wherever that is).
4. How do the costs compare. Real costs, no cheating.
5. Can the cloud comply with my orgainzations governance requirements?
6. Do I have the confidence that the vendor has staying power needed in a downturn?

I am sure there are others but lets start with these for now..

Let me know your thoughts.