Telecom Lead America: WakeMed Health & Hospitals has upgraded its network leveraging Ciena’s packet networking solutions.

Thanks to Ciena’s OPn architecture, WakeMed’s network is now more scalable and programmable.

Moreover, the enhanced network handles WakeMed’s hospitals, clinics and data centers with greater capacity to support high-bandwidth clinical and business applications

“Ciena’s packet networking solution offered a cost effective alternative to our legacy DWDM equipment, reduced the complexity in the network and delivered increased bandwidth,” said John Tuman, director Network Services, WakeMed Health & Hospitals.

Ciena claims that WakeMed has reduced network real estate and power consumption expenses by roughly 70 percent, which has resulted in approximately 60 percent reduction of the total operating cost for its network.

Using Ciena’s 5150 Service Aggregation Switch, the hospital’s upgraded network has quadrupled the health care system’s bandwidth capacity, and provided carrier-grade resiliency and reliability to ensure rapid delivery of critical health care applications and services, such as picture archiving and communications system, e-ICU, electronic health records and administrative applications.

“For a regional health care provider like WakeMed that operates multiple facilities in disparate locations, it is essential to have a reliable network that can connect its facilities to each other, and to data centers, instantly. Using the 5150 to offer high-bandwidth broadband access along with Ronco’s expertise for project management, WakeMed now boasts a reliable, flexible backbone network that can scale to meet a growing array of digital health care services,” said Chad Whalen, vice president and general manager, North America Field Operations, Ciena.

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