Juniper Networks and Integrated Security

Blood Systems, one of the country's oldest and largest blood service providers, relies on Juniper Networks Integrated Security, Access and Data Center Solutions to give life to its wide area network. Blood Systems provides blood, components, and special services to patients in more than 500 hospitals in 18 states and with such critical care the company relies heavily on keeping in touch with employees across 84 locations.

Some challenges faced by Blood Systems, included:

• Upgrade nationwide frame relay WAN to a fully meshed MPLS network and deploy new routers at 84 locations
• Support immediate expansion of remote access connectivity to all employees in the event of a pandemic
• Protect key medical equipment that's unable to run antivirus from inbound and outbound threats
• Maximize WAN investment with application acceleration and optimization

Blood Systems wanted to optimize its network for business value, increase flexibility and to support business continuity requirements. Ultimately, most of the benefits from the Juniper Networks router deployment could be accounted for in operational efficiencies. Other beneficial results included:

• Centrally staged router deployment for MPLS network with 84 sites so that nontechnical medical staff could plug in the routers- with 100 percent
• Met business continuity goals by enabling employees to work from home in the event of an emergency
• Protected key medical equipment that cannot run antivirus software against inbound and outbound threats
• Enabled the deployment of storage-area network synchronization and disaster recovery between primary data center and disaster recovery site

Ultimately, through Blood System's partnership with Juniper, network applications were strengthened and the benefits were numerous. Next up for Juniper is compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accounting Act (HIPAA) regulations, as the non-profit is rolling out new applications that require HIPAA compliance.