“Our care communications are now housed in a secure environment”

With over 25 locations, care institution Pieter van Foreest is one of the largest care providers in the province of South Holland. Every day staff and volunteers offer a wide range of services for the elderly in the regions of Delft, Midden-Delfland, Pijnacker-Nootdorp and Westland, when it comes to living, care, and well-being. The organization also has an innovative IT team. They entrusted their business-critical equipment and services to NorthC.

The welfare sector has experienced considerable changes within the last few years. “Together with our clients we look at what they can still do themselves, and how our colleagues might be able to help”, says Sander Rimmelzwaan, Project Manager Infrastructure at Pieter van Foreest. “There is a lot of collaboration. The exchange of information is very important in this.”

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“We entrust our business-critical

equipment to the data center.

Our care communications are now

housed in a more secure environment.”

From decentralized to centralized

Pieter van Foreest wants to provide the best care to its clients. In addition, the organization is progressive when it comes to IT developments. All of their locations have their own IT infrastructure, requiring a lot of work and maintenance. To better prepare for the future Pieter van Foreest decided to realize one central data center with a uniform base infrastructure. Rimmelzwaan: “One of our principal demands was to centralize management even further. We wanted to increase the continuity, flexibility and availability of the IT environment to be able to work faster and more efficiently.”

Secure and reliable

Pieter van Foreest’s migration project group created a draft of the demands an external data center needed to meet. Rimmelzwaan was a part of this project group. “In case of emergency we need to be at the datacenter in as little time as possible. The costs of the data center also need to be in proportion.” Another demand was that the communication data needs to be in a Tier 3 Dutch data center. Rimmelzwaan: “This built-in security is our first and top priority. After all, we work with confidential client data.”

NorthC quickly caught Pieter van Foreest’s eye. The data center meets all the requirements and has been taking care of other care organizations’ communication data for years. This gave Pieter van Foreest the confidence that their care communication infrastructure is in good hands. Included in this communication is telephony, nurse call systems, and home automation systems (cameras and sensors).

Effective and cost-efficient

An entire renovation and migration of the IT environment has taken place. Additionally, a backup environment was setup in one of the own office buildings. Two different locations are now running an identical production environment with their own data lines. This safeguards the availability in case of calamity. As a result of the changes to their IT infrastructure Pieter van Foreest now has a better manageable IT environment. As an added bonus, they are also saving on energy costs. Rimmelzwaan: “The collaboration with a data center makes our organization more flexible and more manageable at the same time. We lose less time on execution and have more control.”

“Our communication data is now

housed in a Tier 3 Dutch data center.

This built-in security is our

first and highest priority.”

Sander Rimmelzwaan, Project Manager PvF