Convergent cures hospital's net ills

Englewood, Colo. - Precedent Health had a major problem: The organization was about $2 million shy of what it needed to set up the voice and computer networks for the new Denver hospital it was planning.

To meet budget, Precedent's IS Director Roy Crookshanks started planning cuts. He abandoned an ATM LAN for 10M bit/sec Ethernet. He eliminated redundant backups. He wiped out full-time monitoring of the network. WAN connections were scaled down.

But with the help of competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) Convergent Communications, Inc., the hospital opened two weeks ago with the network Crookshanks originally designed. Convergent basically took over construction of the hospital LAN and WAN with no up-front capital investment by Precedent. "We could not have built this network ourselves," Crookshanks said.

Convergent is more than the average CLEC. It will buy a customer's existing LAN for cash, install new gear if necessary, supply WAN links and then manage the whole network.

When Precedent called on Convergent, the hospital had already started installing an Ethernet LAN and had leased hardware. Convergent took over those leases and installed the 25M bit/sec ATM LAN Crookshanks originally wanted.

The hospital is now setting up a frame relay WAN that connects remote clinics to the hospital network. Some of the clinics have been tied in by 56K bit/sec lines, but high-bandwidth applications, such as radiology image transfers, will require upgrades to 1.5M bit/sec links.

By hiring Convergent, Precedent avoided the $5 million up-front cost of setting up its own network and instead pays a $130,000 flat monthly fee, or $1.56 million per year, based on the number of workstations in use, Crookshanks said.

The hospital has 253 network users, and over the next five months that figure is expected to grow to 450. The number of remote offices is expected to increase from 15 to 50 over the next year. Part of Precedent's savings came from eliminating 12 network IS jobs. The work is now done by Convergent employees. Convergent estimates it can offer support services for 30% to 40% less than companies pay for in-house support. In some of its points of presence, Convergent uses PBXs to do voice switching. Data is routed to the appropriate long-haul carrier.

Convergent offers local and long-distance phone and data services as well as design, installation and continuing care of LANs down to the desktop. The CLEC set up shop in five states with plans to expand nationwide focusing on businesses that have up to 500 desktops.

Convergent: (303)749-3000

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