Neal Matthews, Practice Lead, Data and Analytics Services
Not all of us hate fractions. But for some, memories of elementary school are punctuated with irritation, bewilderment and even panic over this dreaded subject in math class. Even though most of us end up mastering a working knowledge of fractions, we’d like to save you from needing to apply that knowledge in a critical area of your responsibility.
What Do Fractions Have to do with IT?
As anyone responsible for managing IT can attest, the range of relevant technologies is vast -and growing all the time. Classic IT evokes images of servers, storage, and networking. And then there’s more recent technology like data and analytics development, cutting-edge cloud-native services, and operational process techniques and tools such as DevOps. Simply recognizing the names of the items in these expanding lists is a massive challenge. As an example, AWS’ current list of top-level services is well over 200 items. Expecting any individual to have detailed knowledge of all of them is a tall order – even for skilled professionals.
Of course, effectively architecting, implementing and operating cloud technology requires much more than name recognition. It’s essential to leverage solid understanding of each service and technology: why it exists, what unique capabilities it offers, how it interacts with other services you already use, and how much it costs. Because no individual can possibly have deep knowledge of every tool in your tech stack, it requires an entire staff.
It’s simple. You just have to hire the expertise: dozens of architects, engineers and developers. No problem, right? In reality, hiring this level of cloud architecture and engineering talent is extremely challenging. Cybersecurity talent is hard to find, hard to vet, and a significant human capital investment. Oh – in case you needed another challenge, this vast staff of cloud talent must have a functional understanding of the healthcare business as well as vital compliance and security requirements to which your company is obligated (at the risk of severe penalty).
More and more U.S. healthcare companies are realizing that it’s simply not affordable or practical to hire enough appropriately skilled staff to cover the necessary range of technology. Ideally, companies could somehow access the entire range of expertise needed, without having to hire and pay for full-time staff members. You could perhaps say they need FRACTIONS of employees, each with the knowledge and skills necessary only when needed.
This is how ClearDATA, healthcare’s largest managed cloud and defense provider, eliminates your need to deal with “fractions.” With a large, diverse staff of specialists, your managed services relationship with ClearDATA ensures continuous access to the broadest range of expertise across the technologies of the three major public cloud providers. What’s more, ClearDATA staff are steeped in the knowledge of HIPAA and HITRUST guidelines and requirements, and we leverage our proprietary Policy-as-Code™ compliance platform as the basis for all solutions. If you are looking to augment your cybersecurity and IT defenses and want help from the experts, reach out to the ClearDATA team.
