AWS Case Study: EMBI

Scott Richards, CEO and co-founder, describes the company’s offering in greater detail: “We leverage industry-leading business intelligence [BI] toolsets to provide our customers web-based, on-demand, key performance metrics they need to manage their operations and business. Performance dashboards give them a graphical, high-level ‘how are we doing’ context. With one or two more clicks they can access more details behind each metric so they can manage the issues impacting their performance.”

Richards notes, “Our business model is based on the cloud. We believe that cloud-based services and solutions can provide health care organizations [HCOs] a cost-effective method to leverage the virtual build-out of their infrastructure. Cloud computing allows hospitals the ability to buy the software and hardware needed as a service instead of trying to buy or implement solutions in the traditional manner that they couldn’t afford.”

Why Amazon Web Services

EMBI selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) because of its elasticity, time to deploy, cost, management console, flexibility, recoverability, and wide range of options.

EMBI is using the following AWS products:

• Two Amazon EC2 on-demand instances with
  • Microsoft SQL Server, with SAP/BusinessObjects as the application server
  • Windows Server as a web server
  • Microsoft SQL Server to function as a data staging server (to be added)
• Three Amazon EBS volumes

Development of the solution involved use of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard and SAP/BusinessObjects. Richards’s reports, “We completed porting our solution and clients into AWS in January. Advanced features from AWS will be integrated into our architecture over the next year.”

As of May, 2012, EMBI has eleven hospital emergency departments live on their platform. Richards says, “We have also developed dashboards and related analytics for a hospital-based surgery and primary care physician practice groups and are working with two multi-site physician specialty practices. By June, 2012, we expect to have commitments that will double our number of installed sites by the end of the year and again in 2013”

The company has approached security in the cloud, says Richards, “by implementing a web server with a firewall and user accounts for accessing the AWS services and servers.”

The Business Benefits

Richards notes that some of the top benefits of using AWS are cost, access, and scalability. One feature in particular that has been useful is the AWS Free Usage Tier, which allows new users to get started using the AWS platform.

In terms of take-aways, Richards advises others to “invest in a partner that has experience with the platform and its options. And invest in a cloud provider that offers solutions that are reliable, secure, and cost-friendly.”

The company’s next step is to build a service that uploads data from their client source systems into EMBI’s data warehouse more frequently so they can offer near-real-time dashboards and analytics in addition to their current monthly reporting model.

Richards says, “More frequent uploads will also allow us to provide daily and weekly comparative analytics. We are committed to using AWS for all our product expansion. EMBI’s current and future analytics solutions will benefit from the brand recognition, stability, and reputation of AWS.”

To learn more, visit http://embiondemand.com/ .

Added July 3, 2012