EqualLogic Ensures HIPAA Compliance at Thomas Memorial Hospital; EqualLogic's PS Series Arrays Provide Advanced Data Protection Features for Comprehensive Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Solution

Business Wire, August 17, 2005

NASHUA, N.H. -- EqualLogic(R), the leading provider of enterprise-class iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions, today announced that Thomas Memorial Hospital has installed a PS Series-based SAN to provide doctors, nurses and hospital administrators uninterrupted access to critical patient-care information. At the recommendation of network integrator Advanced Technical Solutions, Thomas Memorial Hospital deployed EqualLogic's PS200E storage arrays to put in place a comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery (DR) plan that complies with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).

Thomas Memorial Hospital is a 261-bed, not-for-profit healthcare resource located in South Charleston, West Virginia, that boasts the latest breakthroughs in technology and treatment for a wide range of innovative services, including the Thomas Cancer Center, Sweet Dreams Maternity Services, Sleep Diagnostic Center, Pediatric Care, CareCenter 24, Outpatient Services, Home Health and Physical Therapy.

The EqualLogic SAN at Thomas Memorial Hospital provides intelligent, scalable storage for a predominantly Microsoft Windows XP environment running more than 100 servers and 500 desktops for about 50 applications. Applications range from Microsoft Exchange for all 1,200 hospital employees and SQL Server databases containing medical records to specialized medical information programs for surgery, pharmacy and laboratory management.

Today, business continuity is ensured with a vastly improved backup process. Prior to deploying the PS Series networked storage solution, Thomas Memorial was backing up to tape, which rendered the stored data vulnerable for 72 hours at a time. Now, with EqualLogic's PS200E arrays, the same comprehensive backup process takes only four hours, and data is immediately recoverable. Once Thomas Memorial's primary data center has consolidated all of its storage on the EqualLogic SAN, the hospital will deploy additional arrays for a secondary data center across the street for full DR capability.

"In healthcare, uptime is king," said Mark Boggs, IT manager at Thomas Memorial Hospital. "When a patient comes in, we need immediate access to medical records in what are sometimes life-or-death situations. With EqualLogic, we have not faced a second of downtime from installation to daily operation."

"Busy healthcare institutions require comprehensive and reliable business continuity processes, since quality patient care depends on immediate access to medical data," said John Joseph, vice president of marketing for EqualLogic. "By delivering on the unfulfilled promises of traditional SAN technology with our ease of deployment, built-in disaster recovery features and integration with major backup solutions, we offer the best option for hospitals that are ready to consolidate, protect and scale critical data stores."

Advanced Technical Solutions (ATS), based near Charleston, West Virginia, is a full-service network integrator providing a comprehensive suite of professional solutions for high-performance networking and IP-based networked storage solutions. With the broad acceptance of iSCSI SANs for SMBs and enterprise storage environments, ATS now offers enterprise-class IP storage from EqualLogic as a natural extension of its complete network services.

EqualLogic's award-winning and data-center proven PS Series arrays are the only native iSCSI SANs to offer a comprehensive and fully integrated, standard feature set at no additional cost. Each PS Series storage array comes with fully redundant fault-tolerant hardware and includes full-featured automatic storage-management software in a self-contained chassis. Multiple arrays can be combined to form a scalable enterprise storage grid of more than 100 terabytes.

About EqualLogic

EqualLogic(R), Inc., is the leading provider of intelligent, enterprise-class IP storage area network (SAN) solutions that enable businesses - from Fortune 100 to small and mid-size organizations - to realize the economic benefits of consolidated, self-managing storage. The EqualLogic PS Series of storage arrays, based on the company's patented peer storage architecture, is the industry's first automatic storage platform that delivers operational simplicity, comprehensive data management services and high data availability in a single, scalable pool of storage. EqualLogic's headquarters are located in Nashua, New Hampshire. For more information, please visit http://www.equallogic.com.

EqualLogic is a registered trademark of EqualLogic, Inc. Other marks belong to their respective owners.