Business Challenge

Lifeline Specialty Outpatient Centers (Lifeline Sleep Centers) is a sleep study center with six locations in western Pennsylvania. Lifeline users include doctors, sleep lab technicians, a management team, and a customer service team. Prior to i2m migration, Lifeline faced the following challenges:

  • IT infrastructure difficulties due to weather and power outages at sleep centers
  • Slow performance of local legacy infrastructure
  • Connectivity issues between main office and multiple sleep centers
  • Frequent disruptions and power outages with legacy main office applications
  • Mismatched MS Office licenses and multiple versions of MS Office and sleep study applications on legacy client machines
  • Outdated and inefficient legacy client machines, resulting in slow and limited performance
  • A legacy backup system, which experienced repeated failures and required frequent maintenance, as well as expensive physical storage space and servers
  • Expensive IT infrastructure and telecommunication systems
  • Unreliable fax service

i2m Solution

i2m designed and implemented a plan to maximize the benefits of both Amazon Web Services (AWS), i2m, and cloud-based telecommunications. The implementation included the following changes to Lifeline’s IT infrastructure:

  • Consolidated and migrated on-site IT infrastructure to a cloud-based Windows Active Directory infrastructure with File/Print/Application/DNS and Remote Desktop Services, which are shared by main office, sleep centers, and remote users
  • Designed to allow for high availability and redundancy
  • Created IPsec VPN tunnels to each sleep center, ensuring a secure connection between the offices and the AWS Virtual Private Cloud
  • Redesigned and Cloud optimized Lifeline’s mission-critical SSRS sleep study application for cloud migration
  • Shifted users from multiple versions of MS Office to MS Office365 and i2m SaaS products
  • Implemented cloud-based (VOIP) system, which included compliant virtual faxing
  • Connected main office, sleep centers, and remote users directly to a cloud-based Remote Desktop Server using Remote Apps or full RDP desktop, which allows 24/7 access to data and applications to run their sleep studies.
  • Implemented our manged i2mcloud Enterprise Backup solution that uses AWS S3 as its cloud based storage and light client on each server or and other critical nodes.
  • Designed a complete cloud based monitoring/alerting system for their on premise and cloud based resources giving us complete visibility and control.

The following AWS technology was used:

  • EC2 – Windows and Linux
  • VPC
  • VPN
  • S3
  • Glacier
  • IAM
  • AWS Config and Cloudtrail

The following i2m managed technology was implemented:

  • i2m.cloud Enterprise Backup – CloudBerry
  • Data Archiving Solution using S3-IA and Glacier
  • i2m Monitoring/Alerting System – Nagios Check_MK
  • Antivirus
  • Active Directory
  • Remote Access VPN Services
  • File Sharing Services
  • Exchange Email with Antvirus/Malware, Spam Filtering and Ransomware Protection
  • Druva InSync EndPoint Protection
  • i2m managed VOIP and Faxing Services
  • i2m SSRS Sleep Study Custom Application

i2m Solution Benefits

Migrating to the cloud optimized Lifeline’s IT infrastructure, which allowed the main office, sleep centers, and remote users seamless connectivity 24/7, and from any device. Cloud migration increased stability, availability, and redundancy, as well as performance gains for critical business applications. Their new VOIP and virtual fax system gave Lifeline users the ability to send and receive faxes from home. Migrating their SSRS sleep study application to the cloud allowed doctors to access records easily, conveniently, and from any platform. Using Microsoft Office365 and i2m SaaS services made software compliance, deployment, and management simple and efficient. The cloud-based infrastructure has had many benefits, which include a 50% decrease in IT support calls and system problems, and quick recovery in case of failure. Full recovery time was reduced from 1-2 weeks to just hours.

Lifeline now spends less on their updated IT infrastructure than they had previously on just their telecommunications.  They are now able to concentrate on business, rather than IT concerns. These solutions did not require upfront capital expenditures, and they give Lifeline the scalability and flexibility to meet future technology needs at a low monthly rate. Migrating to the cloud also gave them the power to quickly adopt new technology and software applications to meet their needs.

As a result of this project’s success, Lifeline is able to provide sleep studies at a lower cost than many of its competitors. Other sleep study centers and hospitals are looking to Lifeline as an example of cost-effective management and operations.