“Delivering a hosted solution based on SQL Server 2008 R2 is extremely innovative in this marketplace, and it will definitely help us increase our business.” Wouter Hanson, Business Development and Operations Manager, Partezis Partezis wanted to expand its business opportunities and boost availability for its customers’ critical back-office applications. The company implemented a hosted solution based on Microsoft database software. Partezis is now better positioned to increase its business and can meet customer availability needs. It has also lowered maintenance and licensing fees, and its IT employees are more efficient. Business Needs Partezis provides IT solutions and systems management services to more than 50 hospitals throughout Belgium. For the past several years, it has helped manage on- premises SAP-based financial and logistics applications that are powered by Oracle database software. The company wanted to increase availability for these systems to better meet service-level agreements. “We support mission-critical back-office applications that handle everything from processing patient invoices to managing stock replenishment of nursing wards,” says Wouter Hanson, Business Development and Operations Manager, Partezis. “If a hospital’s payment- processing system is down, that could mean the loss of many thousands of dollars daily. And if nursing stocks and deliveries aren’t properly controlled, that could affect the delivery of care to patients.” Partezis also had to respond to customer demands for more maintenance help. “Many of the hospitals had issues maintaining and upgrading the complex SAP on-premises applications,” says Hanson. Customers also wanted Partezis to add new functionality faster. Finding a solution to these challenges was urgent because Partezis wanted to expand its business by rolling out new solutions to hospitals. To meet these goals, Partezis decided to implement a software as a service (SaaS) model that would use a single, centralized database system. However, Partezis did not receive full support for the project from all of its partners. “Of all the database providers we contacted, including Oracle as an existing supplier, only Microsoft was going to engage in support for the SaaS model,” Hanson says. “Additionally, we knew that switching to SaaS would represent a cost reduction of almost 65 percent in terms of database license and maintenance fees.” In early 2010, Partezis began to evaluate new cost-effective technology to support its planned SaaS solution. Solution Although Partezis considered implementing its new environment on IBM DB2 database software, the company instead opted to migrate to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 data management software for two reasons: Partezis had used Microsoft technologies internally and many healthcare organizations were already using the technology. “We had a long relationship with Microsoft, and the support had been great,” says Hanson. Additionally, Partezis was confident that Microsoft could meet the tight timeline required for migration. He says, “We wanted to migrate each of the databases in less than 18 hours, and Microsoft testing showed us how that could be done.” Customer: Partezis Web Site: www.partezis.be Customer Size: 115 employees Country or Region: Belgium Industry: Professional services—IT services Partner: NRB Partner Website: www.nrb.be Customer Profile Based in Heverlee, Belgium, Partezis, part of xperthis holding, offers enterprise IT solutions and services to hospitals and other healthcare organizations across Belgium. Solution Spotlight Better positioned to meet customer demands and increase business Helps meet service level agreements for availability Provides more flexibility in licensing and maintenance fees Saves 35 percent of administrative time For more information about other Microsoft customer successes, please visit: www.microsoft.com/casestudies Microsoft SQL Server Customer Solution Case Study IT Services Firm Migrates from Oracle to Support Business Growth and Lower TCO