Up to 20 district health boards across New Zealand will roll out cloud infrastructure, which is expected to slash IT infrastructure costs across the group by $23.9 million over the next 10 years. The boards are rolling out a National Infrastructure Platform (NIP), which will host applications and systems they use each day to deliver healthcare services to citizens. The move to the new platform – based on cloud services provided by IBM – will start in mid-2015 and is expected to take three years. IBM and crown company, Health Benefits Limited (HBL) announced the agreement, with individual health boards now signing contracts to use the platform. Already, 15 of New Zealand’s 20 district health boards have conditionally approved the business case and HBL is making good progress with the other five, IBM said on Tuesday. Four boards – Auckland, Counties Manukau, Northland, and Waitemata – have signed contracts to use the NIP. The program will transition the health boards from their 40 data centres – varying in size, age, quality and adherence to standards – to two IBM-managed data centres with higher security classifications. These data centres are in Auckland and Christchurch. The IBM solution will aggregate each board into a single infrastructure-as-a-service, which is aligned to the New Zealand government’s ICT strategy and action plan to deliver technology-led savings of $100 million by 2017. Health boards will purchase their IT services on demand and will only pay for what they need without the burden of maintaining and owning their own infrastructure. Graeme Osborne, director of the national health IT board, said the organisation has responded to a number of IT outages at the health boards over the past two years, which had an immediate impact on the delivery of health services. “The improved resilience and strengthened disaster recovery capabilities of NIP will reduce the risk of IT outages affecting the efficient operation of health services,” said Osborne. Follow CIO Australia on Twitter and Like us on Facebook… Twitter: @CIO_Australia, Facebook: CIO Australia, or take part in the CIO conversation on LinkedIn: CIO Australia Follow Byron Connolly on Twitter:@ByronConnolly Related content BrandPost Smart UPS Connectivity: what it is and why you need it By Veronica Lew Mar 27, 2023 4 mins Remote Access Opinion Huawei’s F5G rollout plan signals new wave of green technology and digital transformation At MWC, Gu Yunbo, President of Huawei’s Enterprise Optical Business Domain, sat down with CIO to discuss a raft of new F5G launches, and what they mean for enterprise computing. By Peter Kirwan Mar 27, 2023 4 mins Digital Transformation Opinion Huawei launches intelligent data storage solutions at MWC to satisfy rising multi-cloud demand Peter Zhou, President of Huawei’s IT Product Line, joined CIO at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to discuss a rising tide of enterprise investment in storage solutions for on-premises data centers and private clouds. By Peter Kirwan Mar 27, 2023 4 mins Data Management BrandPost AI bots for customer experience: trends, insights, and examples How can you implement AI bots in your company, and what will they be able to do for you? Here’s how Avaya expects things to shake out. By Mike Kuch, Sr. Director Solutions Marketing, Avaya Mar 27, 2023 5 mins Artificial Intelligence Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe