Dallas-based hospital healthcare solutions provider PHNS Inc, has announced that its new subterranean, national data center for PHNS' hospital customers will be located 85 feet underground in a solid limestone cave in the SpringNet Underground facility developed by City Utilities of Springfield, Missouri. PHNS will migrate a significant portion of its national hospital data center operations to its new subterranean data center. This new data center, combined with PHNS' redundant and high availability network, will enable PHNS to ensure that its hospital customers' patient information and technology operations can withstand hurricanes, tornados, floods, earthquakes and other disasters.
"PHNS' new subterranean data center will offer unsurpassed protection for hospitals' vital patient information, and it will ensure that hospitals continue to provide healthcare services despite hurricanes, tornados and other disasters," said Chris Walls, president of PHNS' IT division. "Our new 'digital fortress' will provide our hospitals with unparalleled data center reliability, responsiveness and flexibility, plus improved data backup capability," continued Walls. "The best part is that we will do this at reduced costs to our hospitals because we are centralizing and sharing our hospital IT resources in one highly efficient, centralized and safe data center location."
The new data center will create healthcare technology job opportunities in the Springfield, Missouri area, and PHNS is working with Ozarks Technical Community College and other local colleges and universities to obtain graduates with the necessary technical expertise.
The state-of-the-art SpringNet Underground facility has been specifically designed by City Utilities of Springfield, Missouri to reliably provide centralized computing, disaster recovery, business continuity and data-storage requirements. SpringNet Underground offers the protection of a 56,000-square-foot facility housed in solid rock, 85 feet beneath the surface, delivering the perfect natural environment for business computing. The space is climate-controlled and is based on a unique "building within a building" design concept in which PHNS' data center will be located in its own underground facility surrounded in 8" of concrete. The facility employs multilevel identification cardkey, biometrics access and digital video surveillance as a part of its stringent on-site 24/7 manned security. SpringNet offers high-speed fiber optic Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) services and Wide Area Network (WAN) services via connections to national carriers. Multiple physically diverse Internet feeds enable SpringNet's MAN and Underground services to offer high-speed access to anywhere in the world with the reliability and security associated with City Utilities' utility operations. SpringNet's MAN services are delivered via 100 percent fiber to meet advanced networking requirements, and its network offers up to 10 Gbps Ethernet interfaces - an ultra-fast, high-bandwidth service to address businesses' aggressive computing and networking needs.