In their ongoing coverage of IBM Edge 2014, Dave Vellante and Jeff Frick speak with Tahir Ali, Director of Enterprise Technology for City of Hope National Medical Center. While the gamut of experts, technologists and business leaders, join theCUBE, Vellante says the customers are the only ones who can truly gauge the effectiveness of a solution. In this discussion, Ali shares the challenges his organization faces implementing IT solutions in the healthcare industry, including cost-effectiveness, data management and agile infrastructure.

Ali says IT solutions in Cancer research (in addition to various other diseases the center treats) is a catch-22. His company must navigate providing the service and research. The company aims to both cure cancer and curtail the disease’s penetration. Vellante sums up the financial conundrum this presents, saying the company must determine when “money [should be] spent on research versus other techniques that may be more tactical.”

Given that IT is the highest cost center, Ali says: “We get creative with keeping the service fast and dynamic and agile. But, of course, cutting the cost of it gets a little hairy.” Fortunately, Ali explains, technology gets progressively cheaper over time. The hard drive, computational core and backup, for example, are less expensive than they were years ago.

Another challenge for keeping costs down is data’s rapid growth. Data for healthcare research increase 67 percent annually, according to Ali. Going from managing 1 terabyte of data to 1.67 terabytes requires preparation and innovation when on a strict budget. Ali describes one way of managing the data load as being very creative with offloading, which can increase speed.

Frick expresses his surprise that IT expenditure is so high and inquires about machine technology. Ali attributes the cost to busy call centers and growth. Ali also explains that their high-end equipment is used for imaging data. A grant allows them to keep the machine operational for 10 years. The data it produces is maintained as Ali explains, “Everything we have we need to keep; we need to back up.”

Vellante asks about Ali’s experience as an IBM customer. Ali shares that seven years ago, City of Hope National Medical Center had a major partnership with IBM. They use Brocade and are now considering v7000 as their Tier 2. He describes the technological growth as, “A full refresh. Before that we were using Dell Compellant. But, the infrastructure we had was not scaleable and not fast enough.”

The medical center is also virtualizing TMS. The hot data comes straight to TMS, so there is no need to manually place data on the flash. Ali says this means, “Our database is faster [and] our website is faster just having that flash up front for hot data. So, [our team] gets more sleep.”