Almoosa Hospital gains business continuity and data resiliency with OCI

With a reputation as a technology leader in medicine, Almoosa Specialist Hospital relied on the high availability of its database and applications to provide efficient, patient-centric healthcare services around the clock. However, the organization’s technical team began to question the capability of its on-premises backup and restore setup to handle unforeseen disasters and provide business continuity. Almoosa was relying on Veritas Net Backup and Oracle Data Guard to provide failover for its Oracle Database and Oracle E-Business Suite applications.

When the system began to exhibit limitations in Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO), the hospital became alarmed about possible downtime affecting its intensive 24/7 surgery and healthcare. Almoosa began looking for an alternative disaster recovery solution for its multiterabyte database and a range of applications to mitigate the risk of service failure.

Almoosa searched for a product that would bring greater reliability, scalability, and faster recovery times. After evaluating several cloud vendors through proof of concept, performance testing, security screening, cost analysis, and service level agreements, Almoosa selected Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) based on price, performance, security, reputation, and support. The hospital’s long-term relationship as a customer of Oracle database and Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) applications weighed in Oracle’s favor.

The hospital was also impressed with the backup and recovery features of Oracle Active Data Guard, as well as the security functionality provided by Oracle Identity and Access Management (IAM), Oracle Virtual Cloud Network (VCN), Oracle Security Zones, and Oracle Web Application Firewall (WAF).

Oracle Cloud Lift Services, using RackWare, successfully migrated a copy of Almoosa’s database and applications to establish disaster recovery on OCI while maintaining connectivity with the primary site on-premises over a secured network.

Disaster recovery on OCI—duplicating the customer’s on-premises Oracle database and hybrid applications—provided near real-time replication within the desired RTO and RPO goals, thanks to OCI’s backup, recovery, and continuous data protection features.

Greater performance, resilience, and security were matched with lower total cost of ownership. Almoosa was freed from the upfront purchase of duplicate recovery hardware and the costs of setup, configuration, and maintenance—all now automated within OCI.

By replicating Oracle Database on-premises to a standby Oracle Database Enterprise Edition on OCI, Almoosa gained peace of mind with a consistent copy of the primary database for instant recovery of critical data in case of disaster. Also, Oracle Active Data Guard helped ensure that any changes made to the primary on-premises database were immediately replicated to the standby database. This allowed for quick failover and minimized downtime, helping to safeguard business continuity.

With disaster recovery in the cloud, Almoosa gained bulletproof availability of its Oracle database, which supports the health informatics environment. The Oracle EBS applications that underpin the administrative and financial side, inventory control, purchasing, and human resources functions of the hospital are now also secured with disaster recovery on OCI. Security in the OCI standby environment was strengthened by OCI security features such as IAM, VCN, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection, and WAF, all of which were important to Almoosa’s EMR platform, for which it was recognized by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).

Additional enhancements of the healthcare providers’ architecture included Oracle Integration Services, with prebuilt connectors and adapters for integrating Oracle EBS with third-party medical systems and government regulations. In addition, compliance and governance were bolstered by the disaster site in the Oracle public cloud region located in Jeddah. The site adheres to Saudi directives for data residency, redundancy, and latency—guaranteeing that patient data remains inside the country.

Almoosa Health Group is a leading healthcare provider that operates 750 beds in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Almoosa Health Group consistently strives to offer innovative and patient-centric healthcare. The group has invested significantly in various healthcare and educational ventures. Its flagship hospital, built in 1996, was the first private hospital in the city of Al-Ahsa.

Learn more about Almoosa Specialist Hospital