Integrating a SharePoint Collaboration Framework in the Cloud into the Department of Defense HealthCare System

Integrating a SharePoint Collaboration Framework in the Cloud into the Department of Defense HealthCare System

Introduction

The Healthcare industry has emerged as one of the greatest benefactors of cloud computing. Instant collaboration between global extranets helps provide healthcare products and services to patients all over the world the second it is needed. While it may not always shorten the time spent in the waiting room, medical professionals have instant access to patient's Electronic Health Records (EHRs) via cloud services (Jerome-Forget & White, 1995).

This shift in the industry's document management and extranet accessibility is due in large part to countless urgent care facilities and hospitals utilizing Microsoft® SharePoint. The collaboration platform has revolutionized Healthcare Information Technology (HIT) by streamlining workflows and automating processes. These benefits start with aiding the medical community but ultimately find their value in assisting the patients.

Downtime in this industry can mean the difference between life and death. As you focus on your core competencies within the medical arena, Fpweb.net provides a highly available, 100% uptime guaranteed, secure environment for your data. The Fpweb.net SharePoint Cloud can meet high traffic demands and is easily scalable to your business's changing needs. Fpweb.net's dedicated SharePoint Hosting offers significant cost savings through support, licensing, integration, hardware, upkeep and continued maintenance. Fpweb.net's SharePoint Cloud is an essential part of cloud computing for the medical community.

Discussion

A recent study by Pique Solutions in April 2011 highlighted a propensity among Oracle customers to migrate from Oracle collaboration tools to the Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 platform. Among the many technical and business reasons cited in the research, and benefits realized by companies that have migrated collaboration workloads from Oracle to SharePoint, total cost of ownership (TCO) was a primary driver for migrations. According to the study, “a large majority of respondents recognized the [SharePoint] platform's value and ability to drive lower total cost of ownership.” (Honigsbaum, 1995)

This paper draws on primary research in a related study to examine in detail the cost of ownership and related business aspects of migrating collaboration workloads from Oracle to SharePoint, and it presents a business case for such migrations. Key findings from the research include:

An impressive 176% average return on investment in the migration from Oracle to SharePoint, based on cost savings related to the acquisition, implementation, administration, and business usage of collaboration tools.

A significant portion of the savings was in the initial deployment by taking advantage of “out-of-the-box” SharePoint capabilities, which were considered broader than those of the Oracle products replaced.

Faster time-to-market/time-to-value for SharePoint, with an average improvement of 22% in the time required to deploy.

A 34% average increase in user adoption and active usage by business users.

This business case is based on a series of in-depth interviews and detailed cost, value, and business metric data collected in May 2011 from companies that had completed migrations of Oracle collaboration workloads to SharePoint. Specifically, content and records management represent the most common workloads initially migrated, in most cases as ...