Westminster accelerates access to applications

Westminster Primary Care Trust has solved lengthy log in times for community staff by implementing a Cisco Wide Area Application Service across five of its 22 sites.

By using the WAAS and sorting out profiles the PCT has reduced log on and log off times to its network from over seven minutes to less than a minute, saving staff time and frustration, said David Thomas, head of IT operations.

“Some of our smaller centres have small bandwidth, but that does not mean they are not using fairly large documents and folders held centrally at headquarters,” he said. “Because of this we were having major problems with log on and log off times and issues with access to files.”

The WAAS is a data accelerator that acts like a large memory cache at either end of a broadband connection. Mr Thomas said: “Initially the WAAS did not make much difference, but once we had identified some issues with our roaming profiles we found it extremely useful.”

He said not all sites needed WAAS as some had 10Mb broadband lines. But, he added, WAAS was not an interim solution as it was likely to remain in place.

“Even if we put in a big line to a small site we would need a back up line and it may be that we use WAAS,” he said. “It may be that even with a big line we would need WAAS as we move into the age of social networking and videos.”

The PCT is now investigating mobile WAAS for its community staff. Terry Espiner, healthcare sector manager at Cisco, said PCTs and mental health trusts were increasingly looking at WAAS as a cost effective solution for data acceleration across multiple sites.

He said: “The technology has been around for two to two and a half years. The fact is that many applications were written for local area networks and do not work well across wide area networks. It manifests itself in unacceptable response times and WAAS is used to put that right.”

So far around a dozen PCTs and mental health trusts are using Cisco WAAS installations, Espiner said.