Baptist Health South Florida uses Ethernet switches for voice traffic between five private branch exchange (PBX) systems.
Business Challenge
Baptist Health South Florida is the largest faith-based, not-for-profit health care organization in the Southeastern United States. Its network of services extends throughout Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties with Baptist, Baptist Children's, South Miami, Homestead, Mariners and Doctors Hospitals, and Baptist Cardiac and Vascular Institute.
For many years, the hospital has entrusted its critical data applications to a Cisco® network. In the Intensive Care Unit, for example, the network allows nurses to monitor patients' vital signs from the nurses' station. The same information also travels over the network to the data center, where an application looks for trends suggesting that intervention is necessary.
Baptist Health wanted to build a parallel network for private branch exchange (PBX) voice traffic to keep it completely separate from vital patient-monitoring data. The new network had to deliver excellent performance because employees make thousands of calls daily, using traditional phones as well as wireless phones that connect over the hospital's Cisco wireless network. The solution had to fit into the small space available in wiring closets. And Baptist Health wanted a solution that would support Gigabit Ethernet today and 10 Gigabit Ethernet in the future.
Solution and Results
All of the hospital's PBX voice traffic now travels over an optical network based on Cisco Catalyst® 4900M Switches. "We chose the Cisco Catalyst 4900M Switch for our PBX voice network primarily because of its performance and reliability," says Gilbert Albornoz, director of telecommunications and network, Baptist Health. "Also, we use Cisco gear for our production network, and we prefer a single-vendor solution to simplify management and avoid unexpected results."
One Cisco Catalyst 4900M Switch resides in each of five healthcare facilities as well as in the data center. The switches currently connect over Gigabit Ethernet. The IT department designed the solution so that if any switch fails, voice traffic can still reach its destination over another path.
Benefits of the new voice network include:
• High performance and reliability: "Cisco Catalyst 4900M Switches provide excellent performance, and voice quality is excellent," Albornoz says. The same network will later be used for videoconferencing and video-based training.
• Low capital and operational expense: The hospital IT department purchased and is managing just the right number of ports. Cisco Catalyst 4900M Switches have eight ports built in, and the IT group can add new ones by inserting modules containing from four to 20 ports. The switches occupy just two rack units in the wiring closets, saving the hospital the cost of expansion.
• Investment protection: When Baptist Health migrates to 10 Gigabit Ethernet, it can continue to use the same switches without any additional purchases.
"The Cisco Catalyst 4900M made it cost-effective to build a parallel network for our PBX traffic," Albornoz concludes.
