Millions depend on the accuracy, reliability and security of healthcare technology. As the healthcare industry evolves it has been forced to deal with the demands of new features, growing data sets, and interoperability between organizational boundaries.

Many healthcare application providers have turned to the cloud as a silver bullet to many of these challenges. With its promises of automation, scalability and cost savings, transitioning from datacenters to the cloud has been too enticing to ignore.

However, the implementation of a healthcare cloud migration comes with a seemingly never-ending stream of questions and challenges. 

The Challenges of Cloud Migrations

One of the most common challenges comes from the fact that these applications must still connect with on-premise applications and systems that will remain in the datacenter of a healthcare provider.

Because these systems will remain in place, and not live alongside the new cloud-delivered application, networking issues that erode the value proposition of moving to the cloud begin to emerge.

The temptation for many is to default to their old ways. Deploying costly and complex VPN or MPLS solutions. But using these solutions for cloud-to-datacenter connections end up taking months and are complicated by the mess of configuring NAT between cloud environments and customer-controlled data centers.

And once connections are established, maintenance and support of individual connections becomes a burdensome job that risks downtime and compliance lapses.

The Broken Promise

Suddenly the paradise that the cloud promised has been turned into a better, but still not great, new reality. The intended modernization of the application has been only partially achieved.

Software-defined connectivity has entered as the preferred networking solution when cloud environments are involved. Designed to treat the network as just another service, it brings simplicity and automation to connectivity in a way that legacy VPN and MPLS networking solutions were never designed to handle.

The Network Can’t Be an Afterthought

When thought about early, a software-defined network can become an asset to the new cloud-delivered application instead of another challenge. Accelerating deployments, streamlining management and lowering costs.

And when baked into the execution of a cloud migration strategy a software-defined approach can produce wins for everyone from the implementation team to those that are tasked with maintaining it and most importantly, for customers.

Learn more about Trustgrid Connectivity for Cloud Healthcare Applications