Modernizing Application Delivery to Improve Healthcare Outcomes
Our client is a top-tier California-based healthcare provider that was invested in a costly third-party platform that offered little room for customization. Our client wanted to reduce platform spend and improve observability and control of its applications.
We were asked to assist in validating its approach to migrating to Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and then we put the migration roadmap into action. Perficient has deep experience in the Healthcare domain as well as GCP expertise making us well suited to lead this effort.
An Iterative Approach to Achieving the Desired Future-State
Our cloud and DevOps teams led an assessment workshop to determine our client’s vision for a future-state GCP. The adoption of Kubernetes for application containerization and data migration were key focus areas. Our client has a tremendous amount of data that required analysis to determine which data should be moved, and then how to move it.
After assessing the current-state environment and determining solution requirements, we summarized our findings, created a detailed migration roadmap for achieving the vision, and presented it.
Based on the success of the workshop, we extended our relationship with our client and executed on the roadmap with the goal to eliminate spend on its proprietary platform by the end of that year.
To achieve this goal, we assisted with four key strategic initiatives:
First, we helped operationalize GCP-based infrastructure foundations including environment organization structures, networking configuration, security implementation, logging and monitoring implementation, a high availability/disaster recovery (HA/DR) strategy, and the creation of data governance structure processes and procedures.
Next, as part of the move to GCP, applications were migrated off the third-party platform and onto Kubernetes for modernized application delivery and improved processes and procedures to manage container orchestration.
We then developed automated continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines to speed-up and simplify development and implementation.
Finally, we moved PostgreSQL databases to Google Cloud SQL and BigQuery, which was accomplished with nearly zero downtime, to streamline and increase database management and scalability.
Results
Greater Control and Customization Reduces Costs
Since the migration, our client has reduced spending by 30% and now has more control and observability over IT environments to ensure applications perform as needed.
GCP and Kubernetes allows for more application control and customization, which supports improved business intelligence and advanced analytics.
The improved insights and capabilities resulted in better decision-making and improved applications that enhance the member experience and lead to higher levels of member satisfaction.
