The main theme of the HPE Discover 2015 event in London is the transformation to hybrid infrastructure, with companies now ready to move forward and start the transition. The UK’s National Health System (NHS) offers the perfect example of a large organization partnering with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (HPE) to transform from traditional to hybrid infrastructure.

Bobby Patrick, chief marketing officer of HPE Cloud; Dave McCrory, CTO of Basho Technologies, Inc.; and Martin Sumner, technical lead for the NHS, joined Dave Vellante and John Furrier, cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, at HPE Discover 2015 in the ExCel event center to discuss how the NHS transformed its core system with help from HPE and Basho Technologies.

Rebuilding the NHS Spine

Sumner gives his customer perspective of the transformation he oversaw of the NHS. As one of the world’s five largest employers, the NHS has a central system, known as Spine, that is required to be up 24/7, offering real-time access for over 20,000 systems to its database of documentation for the 80 million people treated by the NHS in the past decades.

Spine is considered critical national infrastructure, but its traditional infrastructure, originally created in 2004, had become expensive to maintain. The government wanted to reduce costs, but keep availability. Martin spoke about how he started with a team of just two, looked at what the large IT companies were doing, and learned from them. He choose to partner with Basho Technologies because its Riak database was simple, and “did just what we needed it to do and nothing more.”

90% faster response time

Patrick joined the conversation to discuss the technical aspects of implementing a hybrid infrastructure, before Martin continued with his success story. The bottom line for the NHS is that the new Spine has been fully available for over a year and has reduced response time by 90%. This is equivalent to approximately 800 working days per year. Although this obviously reduces expenses, Martin emphasized that the goal is improved patient care – less time waiting for a system response, means more time with the patient.

McCrory sees HPE’s advantage as that it understands where people are moving to with the hybrid approach. “That’s where the rubber meets the road,” he said. He sees the real issues as not just the fun of getting a new shiny thing, but addressing operations, costs and management.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of HPE Discover 2015 — London. And join in on the conversation by CrowdChatting live with theCUBE hosts during the event.

Photo by SiliconANGLE