F5 Optimizes RelayHealth’s SaaS Platform for Healthcare Services
BIG-IP Solution Unifies Application Delivery across Multiple Data Centers, Reducing Application Deployment Times, Enhancing User Experience, and Ensuring Regulatory Compliance
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- F5 Networks, Inc., (NASDAQ:FFIV) the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced that RelayHealth has chosen F5® BIG-IP® Local Traffic Manager™ (LTM™) and Global Traffic Manager™ (GTM™) to optimize the performance and availability of its web-based retail pharmacy applications. RelayHealth provides a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform designed to facilitate the exchange of information between pharmacies, hospitals and health systems, payors, physicians, and patients. At RelayHealth, F5 solutions help support an infrastructure that securely processes approximately 11 billion retail pharmacy financial and clinical transactions each year.
“BIG-IP LTM and GTM have helped us develop a more agile, dynamic data center infrastructure that provides improved reliability and faster response times in an easy-to-manage environment,” said Scott Lokey, Manager of Network Engineering at RelayHealth. “And now, for the first time, we can deploy applications on both sides of the country, significantly reducing user wait times and boosting application performance.”
The BIG-IP devices route Internet traffic to RelayHealth’s pharmacy data centers in Atlanta and Sacramento, and optimize application delivery across hundreds of physical and virtual servers. These servers run Linux, UNIX, Windows, and other operating systems, with connectivity protocols ranging from legacy serial connectivity to modern TCP/IP. The BIG-IP devices also store all SSL certificates and handle encryption and decryption for application traffic—functions that previously had to be managed separately on each server.
Using advanced features in BIG-IP LTM, such as TCP optimization and intelligent compression, users experience response times that are two to three times faster. And because each BIG-IP LTM can manage multiple applications, the solution significantly reduces hardware requirements. This simplifies network management as well as reducing power, cooling, and related costs.
In addition, BIG-IP LTM’s SSL termination and customizable iRules™ scripting capabilities mean that RelayHealth’s pharmacy application developers no longer need to write custom code for load balancing, SSL, and other application delivery functions. As a result, deploying an application into production takes roughly 30 percent less time, accelerating the pace of user adoption and enhancing infrastructure agility.
“In the U.S., the Obama administration is calling for healthcare programs that focus on lowering healthcare costs through continued investment in the technologies supporting the industry,” noted Lokey. “F5’s solutions help us improve the quality and continuity of patient care through enhanced collaboration. At the same time, they provide a scalable application delivery infrastructure that we can build on and continually improve.” |
